


Lucinda goes to the Moon

by LadyBinx



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-09
Updated: 2017-07-09
Packaged: 2018-11-30 00:56:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11452638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyBinx/pseuds/LadyBinx





	Lucinda goes to the Moon

The heavy, terrified breathing of Hannah Pierce was fogging in her helmet, making the starlight beyond twinkle strangely. As she bounded across the landscape, she caught sight of a rock that would suit her needs, and hurried over to it. It wasn’t as big as she’d hoped, because in this empty landscape it was hard to judge scale and perspective. She tucked in her legs, holding them as close as her clumsy, bulky suit would allow. She couldn’t feel the vacuum outside her thick suit, but she was shivering nonetheless. She tried to control her breathing so that she could see properly, and tried to think of a plan to escape being killed, but she was distracted by her thumping heartbeat in her ears. She had been lucky to survive this long when being hunted so ruthlessly. She wished she could hide behind this rock forever, for the meagre sense of security it gave her, but her air would run out long before the freezing night descended. She looked up into the sky at the tiny ball of planet Earth and tears sprang into her eyes as she wished desperately that she was back at home with her mum and brother. Then the rock she was leaning against exploded violently. Her body fell back to the ground, raising a cloud of dust and small rocks that drifted out in slow motion. Hannah Pierce became the first person in the history of the universe to die on Earth’s moon, and it was a murder.

*

I was sitting in the Leaky Cauldron, reading the newspaper and eating a small bowl of chips with a beer while I waited for someone. Conversations were floating around the smoky air, but I didn’t have any particular interest at the moment. I was reading about the on-going elf revolution in Russia that I had helped cause, so I was completely engrossed. I was in my usual booth at the back, and most of the regulars know me well enough not to disturb me too readily. So when someone sat down opposite me, I looked up angrily and snapped,  
“What?”  
“I’m glad I found you here,” said the man sitting opposite me. He had long dark hair down to the base of his neck, a bushy but well-trimmed beard and an eye patch with the edges of a scar peeking out from behind it.  
“Oh, William, I didn’t see you come in,” I said.  
“I know. Anything interesting?” he asked, motioning at the newspaper.  
“Yes, very. If you’re going to the bar, can you get me a fresh beer?” I said, eager for just a brief moment more to finish the article.  
“There’s no time for that,” he said.  
“What is it?” I asked, looking at the stress in his eye and the tension in his mouth.  
“Something terrible has happened. I need your help. Immediately.”  
“What is it?” I repeated more firmly.  
“There’s been a murder!” he said in a harsh, hushed tone.  
“Who?”  
“A woman named Hannah Pierce,” he said, and while I felt bad for the poor dead woman, I was glad that it was nobody I knew.  
“I’m confused. Why is this a big deal? Tell the Ministry, and they’ll start investigating. What do you need me for?”  
“It’s not really inside the Ministry’s jurisdiction,” William said, “It’s not inside anyone’s jurisdiction really, as far as we’ve been able to figure out. That’s the main part of the problem, really. I mean, we should have thought of it before, but it didn’t occur to anyone that this would happen! We’ve kept it secret from the public for now, but the debate is raging in embassies –”  
“William, stop rambling,” I snapped, sensing that he was about to launch into a long, babbling, confusing panic attack.  
“I’ve been getting so many damn letters from all over the world! And it’s only been three hours! Some of them have been howlers! Who sends a howler to a grownup?!”  
“What the hell?”  
“Hannah Pierce was a witch on the lunar base that was set up by the Institute that I helped to found. Her body was found on the moon three hours ago, but she’s been missing for several days. She was definitely murdered. Every government involved in the project is screaming to send up their own security teams to ensure the safety of their personnel on the moon. They’re also furiously demanding to send their own investigative teams, too. I think I might get a drink after all,” he sighed.  
“You can have mine,” I said. My interest was piqued now, and if there was going to be a hurry then I didn’t want to be burdened by more beer.  
“Thanks,” he said gratefully and finished the half pint that I had left with a few quick gulps.  
“So, why does this affect me?” I asked eagerly.  
“The Ministry wants to send up a homicide investigation squad. Since Hannah was British they have a strong jurisdictional case, I reckon. The other governments have had a hard time arguing against it, certainly. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to let any government, even my own, swan around like they own the damn place. I’m sending my own investigation team. I want you to be part of it.”  
“What?” I asked flatly.  
“I want you to go to the moon and find out who murdered Hannah Pierce.”  
“Sweet fuck!”  
“I know, it’s a lot to ask. But I need the best, Lucinda.”  
“That’d be me?” I said, still absorbing the task.  
“Exactly.”  
“Who else is on your team?” I asked.  
“Well, I was hoping you could help me with that too. You understand why there’s such a hurry, eh? The next lunar launch is in seven hours. We need to recruit a whole trustworthy team to work for the Institute, and get them briefed and properly prepared, in time to send them up. We can’t wait for the launch after that!” he said.  
“Don’t I need like, months of training and medical tests and everything?” I demanded.  
“By now they’ve sent up hundreds of witches, wizards, centaurs, goblins and elves. There’s no need for you to have a comprehensive training period, just the essential information.”  
“That doesn’t sound very safe,” I said.  
“Oh, don’t worry, it still takes several hours to run through everything. I’m not sending you up there unless you’re alright with the safety procedures. That’s why we need to get a move on, immediately,” William said earnestly, helping himself to a chip.  
“You mean, you’re not coming too?” I demanded.  
“I really want to. I hate the thought of government agents stomping around the lunar base that I helped to create. But if I go, the current Director of the project will have to hold back this diplomatic shit-storm on her own, and she doesn’t have the strength of will for that kind of stubbornness.”  
“Well, I’ll be the Director of the Institute and you can send her weak arse up into bloody space!”  
“Please, Lucinda. I really need your help, and there’s not much time,” he said, and he gave me a look of such desperation and stress, tempered by such fury and determination, that I found myself agreeing. Then he helped himself to another of my chips. I left a note behind the bar for the person I’d been waiting for.  
“I really need to stop hanging out with you,” I said as we hurried out door.

*

I only had one person in mind to be my assistant on this strange quest, and he was easy to find. William and I apparated into the overgrown back garden of an old abandoned pub in the east end of London. We narrowly missing arriving in the middle of smashed, rotten wood that used to be tables and benches. I stepped over an abandoned sun umbrella and we magically pushed aside one of the metal panels, stepping inside the dark, dusty pub full of cobwebs and mould.  
“Who is this guy?” William whispered.  
“This is his usual haunt,” I said jokingly.  
“Oh, he’s a ghost then,” William said, looking around at the dark bar. The fact that he didn’t laugh at my bad pun was an indication of how much stress he was under.  
“Jack Wilson. He used to be an auror, long ago. Before Voldemort was even born.”  
“Baker? Is that you?” said an echoing voice that seemed to come from all the walls. It had a rapid New York accent.  
“Jack? Long time no see. Still no see,” I said.  
“Well, you know I don’t get out much these days,” Jack said as he drifted up through the floor, his ghostly glow bringing a strange light to the dark pub interior. It shone delicately in all the cobwebs covering the old furniture. Jack was a tall man, wearing an old-fashioned trench coat, a pinstripe suit and a fedora. He had a thick moustache but otherwise he was clean-shaven, with beady little eyes darting around beneath a heavy brow.  
“You’re looking healthy,” I joked.  
“I forgot how funny you were,” he said, and floated over to William, inspecting him closely. Jack’s long coat billowed out around him like a cape, floating in a wind that none of the living could sense. William raised an eyebrow, staring down the ghost with one good eye. Jack smirked in his face then turned and floated over to me, hovering a polite distance away.  
“Who’s the cyclops?” he asked me.  
“This is Professor Doctor William Grey. He needs my help, and I need your help in turn.”  
“Oh, sure, the brainiac who sent wizards into space. I read about you in the papers. Nice to meet you. What do you need my help with?”  
“This is still top secret for now, okay?” William said.  
“Sure. Super-duper secret. Cross my heart and hope to die,” Jack said.  
“There’s been a murder on Lunar Base One,” William said, and filled in Jack on the rest of the details that he’d already told me. “I don’t remember much of the information off the top of my head.”  
“Useful,” Jack commented, floating between William and I.  
“He’s also handling the diplomatic situation,” I said defensively.  
“Yeah, yeah, I get it. I do have one question though. Why?”  
“Why? Why what?” asked William, confused.  
“Why did you want to send wizards to the moon?” Jack asked.  
“Why do you want to bring this guy?” William asked me, purposefully walking through Jack and standing in front of him to speak to me.  
“It’s a reasonable question,” I said to William gently, “Why space? Why the moon?”  
“Well, because it was there,” he said with a forced smile, running one hand through his hair.  
“Isn’t that what Kennedy said, or something? Or Armstrong? One of the muggle astronauts?” I said, raising one eyebrow as William ran his hand through his hair again, turning to Jack and then to me, pacing across the dark pub.  
“I just thought it might be cool to use the rainbow cannon. But then there was a lot of interest from the research community in the potential for performing experiments on the moon. They all immediately had theories that they urgently needed to test when they got up there. It must have captured people’s imaginations, eh? But then it snowballed, and it was all I could do to keep in the loop on the development process. It seemed like it would be cool to have every government of the world working together.”  
“You thought you could create world peace? From a project that you started in your back garden?”  
“Well, stranger things have happened,” William said sadly.  
“I don’t know about that. This is pretty strange,” Jack said flippantly, with a grin. “But what about spending all that money? What about the risk? I mean, what does the average guy get out of it?”  
“There have been plenty of advances and developments” William argued calmly, “I mean, nothing very dramatic, but we’ve been rapidly adding to our understanding of magic thanks to the research conducted up there. There’s been a lot of development in divination, and we now understand a bit more about why the full moon affects werewolves and such things. Just last week, they proved that Robinson’s Law of Spell Inertia is completely false. That might lead to a major revolution in future spell-casting.”  
“I don’t know what that is,” Jack said.  
“That’s why you don’t understand how the lunar base is benefiting wizardkind, see?” William said with a grin. Jack peered at William closely once more while William folded his arms then sighed suddenly. “Do we have time for this?” William asked.  
“I like this guy’s moxie,” Jack said to me, pointing at William eagerly with his thumb.  
“Well, thank you,” said William, “But you never answered my question. Why this ghost, of all of them?”  
“Because he was an excellent auror,” I said, “He was one of the best detectives of his generation. And I reckon it’ll help to have a ghost along. He’ll be in no danger, and there’s a chance he’ll be able to make contact with this Hannah woman.”  
“I can also hide in the walls and spy on folk, of course,” Jack said, floating over William and swivelling upside down, his head hovering next to William’s. His long coat fell down past his head, swaying around like a curtain with pockets.  
“He seems a bit sarcastic,” William said.  
“Well, in that case never mind,” I said sarcastically.  
“How did a New Yorker get to be an auror for the Ministry, anyway?” William asked.  
“It’s a long story,” said Jack, stroking his moustache.  
“And you don’t want anybody else with you when you go up?” William insisted.  
“I know Jack. I’d like to have you along too, of course, but I guess there’d be no point in that. I know you need to try and soothe this tornado. What do you say, Jack?” I asked, turning to the ghost.  
He floated over to the bar, moving his hand parallel to the surface like he could stroke it fondly. And then he passed his hand through it, clenching his fist as he did so. He adjusted his hat with his other hand, adjusted his tie and then did up his long coat. He looked at himself in the filthy mirror behind the bar, where bottles of booze would normally be hanging upside down, and dug his ghostly hands into his deep coat pockets.  
“What is it the kids used to say? Let’s rock and roll!” he exclaimed happily.  
“Okay, great. What do we do now?” I asked William.  
“Well, you go home and get your broomstick. With Wilson here in tow, we’ll need to fly over to the Institute.”  
“Shouldn’t I pack, or something?”  
“No need. You’ll be given specialised clothing, and the security protocol doesn’t let you take anything that might be secretly cursed.”  
“Well, at least let me go and lock up, eh? I need to make arrangements if I’m going to be gone for several days.”  
“You think you can solve this in just a matter of days?” William asked sceptically.  
“Well, I’m not staying up there for longer than that! I’ve got stuff to do, after all. I’ll give you half a week, and then I’ll be taking the damn most convenient trip back to Earth. Okay?”  
“I suppose I can’t ask more than that,” he said.  
“And you’re paying me regardless of whether I get a result or not, alright?”  
“Absolutely,” he said eagerly.  
“And if I get into any trouble, of any sort, or any kind of danger up there? Then I want hazard pay.”  
“You won’t be in any danger,” William said, “But if it makes you feel better, then yes. And if you do get a result, then I’ll give you a massive damn bonus.”  
“Damn right you will,” I smiled, and winked at him cheekily.  
“Come on, kids,” said Jack, floating towards the panel of metal that William and I had shoved aside when we entered, “Hey, doc, will I be the first ghost in space?”  
“If Hannah Pierce’s spirit has passed on, then yes,” William said.  
“Wow, who’d have thought it, eh?” Jack said, “Maybe it was worth sticking around all this time.”

*

The Institute had grown massively since I had last visited, at the first launch of the first space-capsule. It was almost unrecognisable now. I had been there when William had first seen the building, and been interested in basing the space institute here. It had been an old abandoned brothel.  
William and I walked through the overly grand front entrance with Jack, clicking up the white steps in my heels and pushing through the big glass doors into the reception atrium. The receptionist looked up expectantly, and then looked at Jack very strangely as he floated through the doors. He didn’t glow as brightly in this well-lit room, but he was still sufficiently opaque to be seen at a distance. The interior of the building was now clinical and white, covered in tiles and a few abstract sculptures. There were paintings and photographic prints mounted on some of the walls of nebulas, stars and interesting planets.  
“Professor Doctor, good evening!” said the receptionist as we approached.  
“Good evening, Sharon. I need security clearance for these two, and I need to speak to the Director and Doctor Roberts immediately.”  
“Um, Professor Doctor… I can’t really do that. Your own security clearance has been revoked since you left,” she said as she scribbled quickly on a notepad and folded into a paper plane, sending it flying off across the atrium.  
“Well, get me my own badge then.”  
“Your security has been revoked, sir,” said the receptionist nervously.  
“Well, the Director and Doctor Roberts will be here soon,” said William, watching the paper plane swing around a corner into the empty corridors, “Why don’t you get badges ready for us now, then if both of the people in charge say we can’t come in, you can throw them away and we’ll leave peacefully, how’s that? Let’s just save some time on the whole issue, okay? I’m sure you realise how much pressure we’re under, right?”  
“Well, to be honest, Professor Doctor, I’ve heard a few rumours already.”  
“Then you know!” he said, gripping the edges of the reception desk and looking at her fiercely.  
“Grey!” bellowed a voice from across the reception atrium. William span around, stress flaring out from him like fire. A man with a big, round face and belly was striding across the room, extending his hand to shake William’s firmly. “Good grief, we’re glad you’re here. How did you find out? Come on, we need you to help us prepare a press release,” he said.  
“Doctor Smith, stop. I’ll be happy to help you out, but first, I’d like to introduce Lucinda Baker and Jack Wilson.”  
“Pleasure to meet you,” said Doctor Smith, pumping my hand vigorously and awkwardly nodding at Jack, who nodded back.  
“They’re going up in the next capsule,” William said, and Doctor Smith spluttered audibly.  
“What!”  
“They’re the Insitute’s independent investigatory team. Do you trust any of the government teams not to exploit this situation for their own benefit?” he asked Smith, who shook his head, still looking dumbfounded at Jack and I. “Then do you trust them to actually investigate? To get to the truth of the matter? You know how unscrupulous the Brazilians are, in particular. And what about the head of the Department of Mysteries?” William continued.  
“This isn’t the place to speak of such things,” Smith finally managed to stutter, and invited us all into his office.  
“I want these two in the briefing and safety checks, first of all,” William said firmly.  
“Yes, alright, fine, whatever,” said Smith.  
“Where’s the Director?” asked William.  
“She’s in a meeting with the damn Minister of Magic himself!” said Smith, “Miss Potts, would you mind showing Mrs Baker and Mr… Wilson here to the briefing room? I believe the first session is due to start in half an hour.”  
“You brought it forward?” demanded William, “Why!”  
“Given the circumstances, it seemed best,” Smith said defensively.  
“Well, okay. That makes sense. Let’s go and talk about it in your office,” William said diplomatically, and left Jack and I to be led into the briefing room by the receptionist.  
She took us through the large white corridors past several double-doors of frosted glass to one marked ‘Briefing Room’ in thick black letters. She pushed it open, and we were shown into a large lecture hall with a big chalkboard at the front. Several people were already sitting in the front row, wearing nondescript black wizard robes. I saw several pointed hats sitting on the tables in front of them. Jack and I sat in the row behind them as several turned around to look at us. I recognised a few faces.  
“Bradley? Jones? Is that you?” I asked in surprise.  
“Miss Baker, nice to see you again,” said Jones politely, while Bradley swivelled around in his chair to shake my hand warmly. Terrence Jones was a pale, prim man with a slight frame and delicate cheekbones. His exact job title was very vague, but he once described himself as the Minister’s chief of second thoughts. Bradley was almost the opposite, with a ruddy face and thick beard. I’d known him a relatively long time, and he’d been as much of a useful friend as he had been a nuisance, but in all that time I had never thought to ask his first name, and it seemed far too late now to politely phrase the question.  
“What are you doing here?” I asked them.  
“Probably the same thing as you. We’re going to the moon, to investigate the death of Hannah Pierce.”  
“I was told it was a murder,” I said, and several of the other wizards and witches turned around to look at me.  
“That is what we shall determine,” Jones said carefully.  
“You’re the Ministry’s team?” I asked.  
“And you’re the independent investigators,” Bradley said.  
“Oh, sorry, this is Jack Wilson,” I said, and introduced both Bradley and Jones.  
“The auror from America? Wow, you’re the stuff of legend,” said Bradley.  
“Holy shit, I’m a legend now? Well if that don’t just beat everything,” said the ghost, and I had to hide my smile.  
“Who else is here to investigate the… death?” I said carefully, and Bradley pointed out a few of the others, whom I nodded a cold greeting to. They returned it in kind. It seemed half of the thirty-strong group had been sent by various governments from across the world.  
Thankfully, the briefing began before I had to make small talk with any of them. Doctor Smith strode from the back of the hall, with his sleeves rolled up, a bright red face and a thin film of sweat across his face. I wondered what him and William had discussed, or more likely shouted about. He coughed, cleared his throat and then summoned up a glass of water with his wand.  
“Ladies and gentlemen,” he began in a bored tone, “We’re going to go over several important elements of space-travel today. It’s vitally important that you pay attention. We’re going to explain the safety enchantments of the suits you’ll be wearing, the safety measures taken on the space capsule and on the lunar base, and the arrangements you’ll find when you get there. Please take notes to look over later, but the information will also be given to you in a leaflet. Please also hold all questions until the end,” he droned.  
I sighed and sat back, and I noticed that the others had all pulled out quills and parchment, including Bradley and Jones. I looked at Jack, who looked back at me, and we both shrugged. I would probably have to rely on the leaflet, but I could always borrow the notes of Bradley and Jones.  
“The first and most important safety principle is to never, ever lose your wand. It’s the only possession of yours that we will permit you to take onto the capsule. It’s vitally important that you never, ever lose it. I cannot stress that enough. The chance you’ll be involved in any accidents is very slight, but should that happen, your safety depends entirely on knowing where your wand is. Keep hold of your wand at all times. Eat with it, bathe with it and sleep with it. Wherever possible, hold it in your actual hand, but of course this won’t always be possible. In that situation, there is a specialised pocket for your wand in your jump suit, easily accessed with either hand. Number one: never, ever lose your wand,” he said, writing it on the chalk board with squeaking chalk. I sighed heavily, and raised my hand. Smith looked at me, surprised, and everyone in the room turned to look at me.  
“Did Hannah Pierce have her wand when you found her?” I asked, and the darkness of the lecture hall helped hide my blush under everyone’s intense gaze.  
“Please hold all of your questions until the end of the session,” Smith said, his voice cracking with stress.  
“Is that a no?” I asked. Next to me, Jack smirked.  
“This is the standard jump suit,” said Smith, ignoring me while his face turned bright red again. He held up a plain grey jump suit with several pockets and pouches in black leather belts around the waist, thighs, and looped over both shoulders. Several other pockets sealed with Velcro flaps, including one on the front of the suit that Smith demonstrated was a wand-holster. A zip at the side and a leather buckle around the neck sealed the thing around the wearer’s body. Smith also demonstrated the boots we’d be wearing, made of leather with thick rubber soles. The metal detailing on the soles held magical runes that would help us grip to the floor, and there were more leather buckles that would help us stay in them without bouncing away in the low gravity.  
While Smith started talking about the safety procedures for the flight through space, I was massively surprised by the head of another ghost appearing out of the floor next to my feet. She held her finger to her lips and winked at me. It was Madame Melanie, the ghost that had haunted this old building before it had been turned into the International Institute for Magical Space Exploration. Like I said, it had been an old brothel, and she had been the madame who had fiercely protected her girls. I smiled at her, but refrained from waving. I nudged Jack, but my elbow passed right through him. Of course, it still got his attention, and I nodded his attention to the ghost’s head sticking through the floor. He nodded understanding at me, and he floated slowly through the chair he’d been pretending to sit in and then disappeared silently into the floor, completely unnoticed.  
Inside, I was laughing at who Jack would meet when they found a private room to talk in. Madame Melanie was a very sweet, intelligent and sensuous woman who had died some time ago. She had a pretty face, with big eyes and eyelashes, long, straight black hair and dark lips. She didn’t look young though, like you’d imagine, but with a certain intent sexuality only available to proper adults. She also had long, slim limbs, small breasts and narrow hips. I knew all of this because the clothes she had died in, and thus the clothes she was doomed to wear for as long as she was a ghost, was a pair of high heels, stockings with suspenders, frilly knickers, a lacy basque and elbow-length gloves. She also had a leather collar around her neck with a chain attached, that she carried mournfully in her hand. The leather collar was too tight, and indeed it had been her undoing.  
The rest of the briefing was long and boring, but I did my best to pay attention. Finally, after a long while, Jack reappeared through the floor, completely unnoticed once more. His tie hung loosely around his neck while he finished buttoning up his shirt, then his jacket, finally pulling his long trench coat over his lap and readjusting his hat over his scruffed-up hair. He gave me a sheepish look and I tried to hide my wide grin. Clearly the ghosts had enjoyed the past hour much more than the living souls forced to sit in this lecture room. Now we spent dozens of long minutes going over the contents of each leather pouch – the various magical powders and potions designed to help in the very unlikely occurrence of any number of very specific accidents. Jack started to idly play with his tie while Smith went over the launch procedure, and I started to notice several other wizards and witches starting to look bored.  
At long last, it was time to change into our jumpsuits. We all filtered through to the locker rooms, and before Jones and Bradley split off into the men’s lockers I made them promise that I could look at the notes they’d made before we got into the space capsule. Jack decided to linger outside the doors, unable to change clothes and unwilling to awkwardly drift around the changing rooms. I was one of the few witches in this locker room, and the others seemed determined to ignore me, so Madame Melanie chose to emerge from the locker next to me.  
“Hello Lucinda,” she smiled, her voice croaking through her constricted throat.  
“Hey Melanie. How’s it going?”  
“Well, things are usually pretty boring around here. But in the past couple of hours they’ve become pretty exciting,” she said with a grin, turning around to preserve my modesty while I undressed.  
“Yeah, that’s what I hear,” I said, “Anything exciting in particular? A certain Jack Wilson?”  
“He’s a very interesting guy, isn’t he,” Melanie croaked, “I really like his accent. I mean, I’m not a big fan of his moustache, but wow, his body is so taught and toned.”  
“What’s wrong with his moustache? I quite like a bit of facial hair,” I said, briefly struggling to undo my boots.  
“Well, it suits his face, certainly. But it… itches,” she said.  
“Are we talking about your face?” I grinned.  
“… Yes,” said Melanie.  
I examined the underwear that came with the suit – it was a white, boring, scratchy one-piece body leotard of some sort. I decided to leave my own matching bra and pants on, with my stockings. After all, they were much more comfortable, and unimaginably sexier than the utilitarian body-sock. I saw two of the other witches also making the same decision. The dagger-sheath strapped to my thigh would have to stay on Earth, since I’d have no way to reach it without unzipping my whole suit. However, I was pleased that my spare wand would fit in the holster with my favourite one. Smith’s warnings about how important it was to always have a wand were still fresh in my mind, despite the long, boring lecture that had followed, because I’ve lost more than my fair share over the years.  
“So, do you think you’ll see each other when Jack and I get back from the mission?” I asked her.  
“Are you joking?” she rasped, “I’m coming too.”  
“What?” I asked, sliding the suit up my body and the sleeves over my arms.  
“I’ve already made the trip a couple of times.”  
“Really?”  
“Well, this is my house. You can’t put the start to a strange adventure in the garden of a curious ghost and expect her not to try it out,” she said, peeking over her shoulder and cheekily glancing at my slim, pale body as I zipped up the suit.  
“Does Jack know that?”  
“He seemed a bit disappointed that he wouldn’t be the first ghost in space after all, but I made it up to him,” she grinned. I started to buckle the belt, and the strap around my neck.  
“Be careful,” she rasped, “Not too tight.”  
Once we had changed, stashed our few possessions and locked our lockers, putting the keys in a specific pocket of our jumpsuits, we wandered out of the changing rooms and milled around in the lecture hall with Jack. Melanie vanished again, lurking in the walls and floors. Apparently the Institute regularly tried to stop her from skulking around in what had once been her home, partly because of her unfortunate attire but also because she might leak sensitive research material or private techniques. The Spirits Division of the Ministry of Magic was mostly a collection of old, useless wizards who tinkered with Ouija boards and chicken gizzards – they were far from capable of enforcing the Institute’s desire to keep out Madame Melanie.  
Now that we were changed, Smith returned to the room and repeated all of the safety information all over again, going into greater detail. I sighed and rubbed my forehead while Jack disappeared again. At least this time Smith distributed the leaflets, so that I had something to read. There were quite a few interesting little spells and charms to use in case of emergencies, like an enhanced bubble-head charm in case of pressure loss, and a sticking spell in case the gravity enchantments fail. I did my best to memorise them while Smith droned on. After what had seemed like an eternity of warnings and explanations, the lecture was finally over.  
Suddenly, the chalkboard – now covered with drawings, warnings and diagrams – started to split apart. Behind the board, there was a large window, looking out over the launch mechanism beyond. It was dark outside now, but the large tower was lit brightly with torchlight. It had a stone base with strange, gigantic runes carved into it, but at the middle the stone lessened, and was replaced with metal girders that held aloft the gears and cogs and axles that angled the prisms and lenses at the top of the tower. At the very pinnacle, there was a golden pod with a few ornate windows. The capsule had to be gold for some esoteric magical reason that had to do with corrosion and conducting the energy of enchantments. It looked tiny on the gigantic tower, whose gears and cogs were even now twitching the lenses and prisms into a new configuration. I heard a few gasps and quick, indrawn breaths from the wizards and witches around me, and beside me Jack reappeared from the floor, his eyes wide with amazement. There was the mark of ghostly lipstick on his cheek, but he had clearly been astonished enough by this sight to abandon whatever he was doing.  
“Sweet hello,” Jack muttered.  
“I’ve seen it before,” I shrugged, “I’ve been deep inside it. I helped to stop it being blown up.”  
“This ain’t the time to start swapping stories again, babydoll,” he whispered.  
There was a large glass door at the side of one of the windows, which slid open and let us walk down onto a gangplank. In a long line, we filtered out through the door and down onto the walkway that led to the ladder at the stone base of the launch tower.  
“I bet when you woke up this morning, you never thought you’d be doing this by the evening, eh?” Bradley said to me, looking back over his shoulder.  
“I didn’t even suspect it at lunchtime,” I replied.  
“Lucinda!” called someone from the front of the walkway. I peered around the crowd, and saw William standing with another woman at the base of the tower.  
“What’s up?” I asked him, secretly glad that he had at least come to see me off safely.  
“I just wanted to say thank you, if I haven’t yet. This is Director Smith,” he said, introducing the woman standing next to him.  
“Another Smith?” I asked.  
“Yeah, they’re brother and sister,” he said, while the Director shook hands with all of those departing on the space capsule. “Don’t mind her, it’s a customary thing. I thought you might like this,” he said, pulling a bundle of black fabric from the pocket inside his coat. It was as long and thick as his forearm, and he pushed it into my arms hurriedly.  
“What do you expect me to do with this?”  
“There’s a strap on it. Wear it like a belt,” he whispered hurriedly, leaning in so close to my ear that his breath tickled my neck, “Open it when you’re alone. Just a little bit of insurance.”  
“Thanks,” I said, and gave him a kiss on the cheek as he pulled away. He looked at me, his single eye flickering between both of mine. He looked so serious that I immediately began to worry – he had said I’d never be in any danger, and now he was giving me suspicious packages. Then he smiled again.  
“I’m the one who was saying thank you. Now go on, get out there. The final frontier awaits!” he exclaimed, and turned to talk to the person who was waiting patiently behind me. I shook the hand of the new Director, neither of us saying a word. Her pale blue eyes beneath her mousy brown hair tried to size me up, burrow into me, and illicit some sort of response, but William was right – she didn’t have the willpower, the strength of character, necessary to handle forceful personalities. I passed her and began climbing the ladder, right beneath Bradley’s wide arse and slow, clumsy boots. The man could move fast enough during a battle but he was far from agile. I clambered up behind him while Jack floated beside me. Eventually we reached the end of the ladder, walked along a metal walkway around the edge of the stone wall and into the mechanism itself.  
I was pleased to find that there was a large, simple elevator in the centre of the tower that let us ride in relative comfort to the top of the tower. We went past the gigantic cogs and gears, grinding together deafeningly. Amongst the axles and taught cables, I caught sight of Melanie floating upwards, parallel to us. Eventually we reached the top of the elevator cable and stepped out onto another walkway beneath the arrangement of prisms, held aloft amongst the steel skeleton of the top of the tower by cables and pulleys that adjusted their angles by fractions of degrees. We walked along the winding walkway between the cables and pulleys, and arrived at the highest ladder. A few of the wizards looked down, but I was smart enough not to. We clambered up to the metal platform, with its stairs up into the door of the golden capsule that was covered in thick, deeply carved runes. At last, we had arrived at the giant space vehicle.

*

It was quite large on the inside, a spherical chamber at least forty feet across. The interior was gold too, but there were copper pipes and cables bolted to the interior of the sphere. There were also what looked like thick steel girders reinforcing the golden walls. All of these things were carved with more runes. There were several portholes, with copper rims and rivets. Most of the floor was covered with mattresses recessed into the floor, lying a reasonable distance apart, divided by walkways with railings along the middles. The ceiling was another great porthole, crossed with copper frames and reinforcements.  
“Hello everyone,” said a man sitting in a chair in the centre of the room, “My name is Winston Cooper. Please choose a safety harness and strap yourselves in. I’ll be coming around to make sure you’re secure. Make sure you’re safe, but don’t take too long because we launch in twenty minutes. I see we’ve got a ghost, eh? Well, that’s fine. The runes on this baby should carry you along with us.”  
“I’m sure they will,” Jack said, and I could tell he was thinking of Melanie. I wondered where she was stowed away.  
I picked the mattress-harness in the furthest corner and buckled myself in, strapping in my legs and waist and awkwardly doing up the strap across my chest. All three of them had an emergency release button that could be reached by either hand. I waited while Cooper came over and checked my harness, telling me it was fine. Jack hovered close to one of the portholes, looking out.  
“Wow, it’s an amazing view out there,” he told me.  
“You think that’s good? You’ve seen nothing yet,” Cooper said as he finished checking everyone’s belts and sat back down in his chair. He had several levers next to each armrest, one of which he pulled to tilt his chair into the floor along a serrated arch of clockwork. He strapped himself in as the chair descended.  
“I’ve seen a fair amount, kid,” Jack muttered, but only I heard him.  
In the next ten minutes, Cooper spoke with the launch control room via a magical mirror next to his chair. I thought I might have been able to hear William’s voice in the background murmur coming from the mirror, but Cooper and the launch controller were exchanging updates and technical news. And then a voice started echoing out of the walls, making even Jack jump. It started counting down from ten, and I felt my heart rate quicken immediately. I had been growing more and more nervous, but now I was entirely scared. I tightened my hands on the fabric of the mattress. The window above us that dominated the ceiling was showing nothing but a clear night sky with no hint of cloud, the stars shining above us. It made me panic to think that I’d soon be significantly closer to some of those starts, so I shut my eyes. When the countdown finished, I suddenly felt pushed down into the mattress by a massive force. It knocked the wind from my lungs, and when I opened my eyes in shock the force made my eyes water. I could look up at Jack, who was looking out of the porthole with an aghast expression. I tried to ask him what it was, but I couldn’t speak. This was very weird, because there was no other sensation – no roaring, no vibrating, no ears popping like flying high on a broomstick or magic carpet. I could hear other people beside me struggling to breathe too, and above me the stars were starting to spiral slowly. I heard Cooper croak something into the magic mirror and the spin slowed down completely. Then a red glow started growing on the window above me, quickly building to a full flaming inferno. We had been warned of this during the lecture – it was the heat of exiting a certain layer of Earth’s atmosphere. It was alarmingly hot and fiery, and I was sure there should have been some sort of turbulence at this speed. Finally, after a length of time that was terrifyingly long but thankfully quite brief in reality, the fire died away. It left a night sky that was much more vibrant and sparkling than anything I’d seen on Earth. It was full of stars.  
The pressure didn’t release for several more minutes though. Eventually we started breathing more normally, the feeling returned to my fingers and feet, and I blinked my eyes several times. I must have blinked while we rocketed out of Earth’s atmosphere, but this was the first time it was so satisfying.  
“That should be it for the next ten minutes,” Cooper said, “Feel free to get up and stretch for a bit. The view from the windows is worth checking out. I’ll tell you when we reach the second stage, when you’ll need to strap back in.”  
For a little while we were in free fall, orbiting quickly around Earth to align properly for the next propulsion phase. I found that I could stand up quite easily and float across the room with the slightest effort. A few of the wizards were entertaining themselves as we all bounced around the room, until Cooper coughed grumpily and urged us to use our boots to stick to the floor. He didn’t want us to interfere with the equipment, he said. So we all reluctantly started sticking to the floor, and I walked over to Jack.  
“Is this what it always feels like for you?”  
“Well, not really. You looked like a rubber ball thrown down a corridor. We got more style when we float,” he said, “But check it out. There’s something I never thought I’d see,” he pointed out of the porthole.  
Earth was visible below us. I could make out the shadows of dark mountains, and the lights of London and several other big cities around Europe. As we continued to speed along through empty space I could see the continent drop away, and the curve of the Earth started to appear on one side of the window. The sun was still setting over the Atlantic, gleaming from behind the planet and shining through the atmosphere like a diamond ring.  
As we went further away from the Earth the sun came out, but the glass was specially enchanted to prevent any dangerous radiation coming through – it had to be, for us not to be blinded by the magic flares during the launch. Jack and I lingered at the window while Cooper told us to buckle into our harnesses once more, until his tone became grumpy. I would have liked to watch the view for the entire trip, but I needn’t have worried. We spent half the journey accelerating towards the moon, which grew large in the glass ceiling with alarming speed. I spent an hour pushed down into the bed, worrying about my blood pressure as the moon came closer. And then we span around, experiencing weightlessness once more, and the Earth swivelled into view. It was much, much smaller now. Cooper started using the levers to start slowing us down as we approached the moon. We were pushed upwards against our harnesses now, and if they didn’t hold we’d be thrown against the window above us. I could feel our inertia starting to lessen, and the harness stopped digging into my breasts and hips. After what must have been another hour we experienced weightlessness once more, very briefly. And then there was a thump, and a judder – the first of the entire journey.  
“We’ve landed,” said Jack.  
“Wow, that was smoother than I thought it would be,” I heard Bradley say, somewhere in the capsule.  
There were clouds of dust drifting up, past the giant window in the ceiling. Earth was a small circle high in the sky, the stars brightly twinkling behind it. I could even see the denser regions of the Milky Way stretching out into infinity. And then a hatch started to close over us, huge and metallic like a set of blinds for a window, each metal slat sliding into place along rails. Clouds of mist and steam swirled across the windows, and there was suddenly icy condensation on the outside.  
“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the moon,” Cooper said, elevating his chair again into a sitting position. “Remember your safety briefing, keep hold of your wand, and please disembark through the door you entered from. I’m just going to go through a few checks with lunar control, but you’ll be met downstairs by someone who’ll take care of everything else, okay?”  
We all drifted out of the space capsule, the sight of Earth hanging in the sky still weighing on all our minds. Even Bradley’s face looked clouded and apprehensive. I felt the moon’s light gravity affecting my body, and I was sure that if I had eaten anything, it would now feel incredibly strange inside my stomach. My hair was done up in a sensible plait, but it snaked out in the air like it was flailing in slow motion. Our boots stuck to the surface we walked on, making it much easier to move, but several of the other wizards were moving their arms around like bad puppets.  
We stepped out of the capsule onto a mobile walkway, and down some steps onto the landing pad on which the capsule rested. I was very nervous about my breathing, looking out at the massive landing chamber, entirely unconvinced that it was air-tight. But the air was still, and warm, and surprisingly fresh. The walls were made of grey steel with thick reinforcing girders and copper piping everywhere. The entire ceiling was dominated by the hatch made of steel slats, and the floor looked like it was made of carved stone. Everything, every surface of the building, was covered in thick runes.  
There was a woman with dark skin and thick eyebrows beneath her massive afro haircut that moved strangely in the low gravity. She smiled at us warmly and immediately started talking in a low, smooth tone that even the people who didn’t speak English as a first language could follow.  
“Hello, everyone. Welcome to the moon, but I’m sure Cooper has said that already, that suave guy. He loves to steal my best lines,” polite laughter, “We’re just going to go through a quick orientation. I know you’ve had your lecture from Doctor Smith down on the Earth, so I’m not going to talk too much. I’m just going to show you around, remind you to always carry your wand, and answer any questions that you might have thought of while you were up in the sky,” she smiled.  
She led the thirty of us into what looked like hangar doors while wizards levitated wooden boxes out onto the launch pad. I lingered at the back of the crowd with Jack to watch what happened – the boxes the wizards brought out were set to the side, next to the capsule. A hatch opened on the bottom of the capsule, revealing more boxes inside. The wizards were all eagerly levitating these out of the hatch and carrying them straight into the hangar doors that I was about to walk through. I assumed it was supplies, like food and medicine. I had an immediate urge to search the boxes that were sitting at the side of the landing pad.  
“Excuse me?” I asked our tour guide, “What’s happening to those boxes?”  
“They’re going to be loaded onto the capsule, and then the capsule is going be lifted from the landing pad onto the launch tower. You’ll be able to see it from the windows in here,” she said warmly.  
“So, when does it take off?”  
“Normally it launches within two hours. There were supposed to be a few passengers, who’ve been looking forward to their return to the home world,” she laughed, “But until everyone has sorted out the situation we have here, and what happened to poor little Hannah, the flight is grounded. Our policy dictates that we always have enough supplies and materials to last up to a month, even with our high population, so it’s not a massive problem for anyone but Cooper. I’m sure that suave old bastard isn’t happy about being grounded, but then he didn’t know Hannah. Until everyone’s satisfied and we can get back to work, he just landed his last capsule. For the moment,” she added, and winked at the crowd all staring at her, aghast.  
My urge to search the crates faded away, but other wizards had only now started to look at them suspiciously. One even pulled out a notebook and started writing. I had to hide a satisfied smirk as I looked into the space we were entering with curiosity. The walls, floor and ceiling were all a clean, clinical grey, entirely without runes. Light came from several magical orbs lined at regular spaces along the high-ceilinged room, and there were some safety notices with red and black text in several languages on every wall. Our guide led us through this room, past several large doors that led into massive corridors for the transport of the big boxes, and through a door at the back into a human-sized space. The appearance of them didn’t change, even the regular safety warning posters. Several of these posters were the maps for the base – from the map, it looked huge. Hundreds of people were up here, sleeping, eating, defecating and working on massive research projects.  
I wasn’t sure what time of day my body thought it was, but my appetite had returned. I knew I was hungry enough to forgo the guided tour given that there were maps everywhere, including one in the leaflet they’d given us on Earth. I let the rest of the wizards follow the smiling woman as she chattered on, leading them away and promising to show them the freely accessible observatories, their living quarters and the other basic facilities. I’d been given my room allocation while I was on Earth, and I was sure I could find it easily. I lingered behind once more until they all left me behind with Jack Wilson, still floating just behind me. As the crowd moved on, the corridor was completely empty. Melanie floated out of the floor, grinning widely.  
“It’s quite impressive, eh?” she croaked.  
“I never thought I’d live to see the day,” Jack replied with a grin.  
“You should see this place from the outside,” Melanie said.  
“You guys go ahead. I’m going to find the cafeteria,” I urged them, tapping its location on the map.  
“We’ll come and find you, then. We won’t be long,” Jack said.  
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep,” Melanie grinned, and they both cackled an echoing, ghostly laugh that echoed through the empty lunar corridor.  
“Look for Hannah’s ghost, if she’s still here. Check her body. Keep your eyes open,” I told them.  
“I always do,” said Jack, lingering briefly above the stone floor and then ducking into it entirely.  
I was now alone enough that I could take a deep, shuddering breath and truly consider where I was – on a highly modern, massive, unbelievably advanced magical research station. I was walking in the low gravity of the moon, the small silver circle I’d so often looked up at and taken for granted. And from what I’d been told, somewhere on this planetoid there was a murderer. And I hadn’t eaten since a few chips at lunch, a dozen hours and a zillion miles ago, on a different world. I wondered what space-food was like.  
I passed a few other people in the corridors staring intently at clipboards or talking with intense voices in other languages. One looked up.  
“You arrive just now?” she asked me in English, with a strong Japanese accent.  
“I did,” I replied, and she nodded. I was apparently dismissed, because she hurried on past me and I heard nothing else from her.  
I found my way into the cafeteria, and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. It was another large chamber, with a high ceiling and bright lights. Along one wall there was a buffet, with simple wooden trays and plates holding a meagre amount of food. There were circular wooden tables painted grey, with steel frames. The stools at each table were the same – apparently wizardkind’s passion for comfort did not extend into the stars. I looked around at the witches and wizards eating at the tables. The room was fairly empty, with only a few tables apparently accommodating cliques and friendship groups based on ethnicity and nationality.  
“So much for international cooperation,” I muttered to myself as I strode to the buffet.  
It seemed I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t make the leap from Earth-time to whatever nonsense clock they were using on the moon. There were things like scrambled eggs, ham or vegetable omelettes, toast with butter or jam at one end. In the middle there were ham sandwiches, cheese on toast, tuna salad – reasonably light lunchtime foods. At the far end there were a couple of roast chickens with boiled potatoes or chips, some other roast or boiled vegetables and a couple of simple desserts like jelly or sweet pancakes. There was piping hot tea or coffee, some simple fruit juice or a lot of jugs of ice water, at the buffet and at every table. I was reasonably disappointed by the lack of alcohol, but I could understand it under the circumstances.  
During the safety briefing they’d told me that the temperature on the moon during the day cycle can far exceed the boiling point of water, but that during the night it can go far, far below the freezing point. Luckily I like ice water, because I could tell there would be a lot of it up here.  
I turned around, my small tray piled with a ham omelette, toast with jam, some of the pancakes and a glass of water. I wasn’t sure this would be enough to satisfy my extra-terrestrial hunger but I could always go back for more. And suddenly I was faced with an ancient problem that has afflicted every communal dining space since the dawn of time: where to sit. Every table that had people looked like it was reasonably full, and I wasn’t sure I could speak the language they were using. I have knowledge of quite a few languages, from Russian to mermish, and even the long-lost language of the elves that has been abandoned and abused so long that it’s lost all grammar, composed now of only disjointed words and fragmented meanings that have probably been mutated beyond all recognition of the long-dead elves that used to speak it. But I don’t speak Japanese, French or any of the languages of India, which I’m pretty sure is what I could hear. As I entered the tenth second of standing awkwardly at the end of the buffet, looking over the room and holding my tray, I saw a familiar face in the far corner and almost smiled with relief.  
“Do you mind if I sit here?” I asked as I approached the table and its lone occupant.  
“You’re welcome,” she said in a light, floating voice that sounded vaguely Welsh. She looked up at me, her grey-blue eyes framed beneath innocent eyebrows and a mouth that smiled sweetly beneath a mess of white-blonde hair.  
“My name is Lucinda Baker,” I said, smiling as I sat down and picking up my knife and fork.  
“Luna Lovegood,” said the blonde woman, putting a small forkful of scrambled egg into her mouth delicately.  
“I have to confess, I know who you are,” I said.  
“Some people know who I am,” she said, her voice airy and light as always, “I know who you are, too. You’re here because of Hannah. Do you think she was murdered?” she asked innocently.  
“What do you think?” I asked, the shock causing me to pause mid-chew.  
“I don’t know. I hope not. Murder is a nasty way to die. It makes the stars sad,” she said. I’d never met Luna before this, I’d only followed her activities on the grape vine – especially during the war. But I’d obviously heard she had a strange, dreamy conversation style. I should have been ready for it, but that last comment gave me pause.  
“Did you know her?” I asked.  
“Quite well. I liked her. I wish she had lived.”  
“You don’t sound very broken up about it,” I said, and started trying to shovel food into my face once more while also being sensitive about the death of her friend.  
“I’ve seen a lot of death,” she said matter-of-factly, without any hint of bitterness or anger, “My mother died when I was very young. And a lot of people died during the war. They kept me in a prison for several months, and they killed a lot of people while I was there. I suppose you could say I’m used to death, by now.”  
“So you don’t care?” I asked, trying to fit an entire pancake into my mouth.  
“I care. Of course I care,” said Luna, slowly turning her big, pale eyes directly onto me just as I was lifting a forkful of pancake to my mouth. I froze. “I liked Hannah. I miss her. I might still be letting the fact of her death sink in, I suppose. Maybe I’m still letting all of it sink in,” she said gently, and finally took her large, spooky eyes off me. The pancake had fallen from my fork.  
“That sounds fair enough,” I said, brightly, hoping that I hadn’t offended her on some level. “So, how long have you been up here?”  
“A couple of months now, probably. It’s quite hard to keep track, since the days and nights are so long. I’m probably going back to Earth pretty soon,” she said, and nibbled at another tiny forkful of scrambled eggs.  
“What brought you up here?”  
“Research,” she said simply, “I’m trying to prove a hypothesis.”  
“I heard you were a naturalist of some sort?” I asked.  
“Oh, I am,” she said.  
“But there’s no life up here,” I said.  
“Well, none that you might notice,” she said with a smile in her eyes, looking dreamily around the room, “But there are creatures that escape us, even now. Have you ever heard of a Crumple-horned Snorkack?”  
“Um, no?” I said.  
“They’re normally invisible. They’re supposed to live in Sweden, but there’s a chance they’re here too.”  
“What?” I asked.  
“Maybe they evolved up here, or maybe they travelled up with the wizards who first came here. If I can’t find them here, maybe they don’t exist anywhere.” she sighed, and ate another tiny forkful of scrambled eggs.  
“So, you’re up here searching for… Snorkacks?”  
“Yes. It’s going quite well, really. I’ve put a lot of Snorkack traps and detectors out on the lunar surface.”  
“Quite well? You’ve found some?”  
“No, but I’m optimistic. My work is quite slow, after all,” she said, sighing again.  
“How come?” I asked, trying not to spray food and ice water across the table.  
“Well, the Crumple-horned Snorkack likes cold temperatures, found in Swedish glaciers for example. So, logically, if they were here on the moon then they’d be found in the darkness.”  
“What does that mean?”  
“They mostly come at night. Mostly,” she said, looking at me once more with her wide, pale eyes. I paused, my glass of water halfway to my lips, hypnotised once more by her placid blue gaze.  
“When did you last see Hannah?” I asked, awkwardly sipping but trying to maintain eye contact at the same time.  
“It was right before she went for her last moon-walk,” she said, “I saw her getting changed in the airlock bay. She said she was going out to collect some mineral samples, which was weird. But she offered to check my Snorkack traps for me, too. She was always very kind.”  
“Weird? Why was it weird?”  
“She was never happy about being in space. She always avoided going out onto the surface. I think that’s why she offered to check my traps for me. She wanted to get rid of me, to be nervous on her own. Some people think like that, don’t they?” she asked.  
“Some people do,” I agreed.  
“It’s a shame. I miss her. A lot of people do,” she said simply, and ate another tiny forkful of eggs.  
At that moment, the doors at the entrance to the cafeteria burst open and the friendly, warm-voiced and charmingly smiley guide entered with her tour group of wizards and witches.  
“Guys and girls, these are our new arrivals,” she said, “And everybody, this is our cafeteria. We can take a break here if you’d like, so we can get some food. Make some friends. Don’t take too long, though, there’s still plenty to see!” she enthused.  
“Oh, look at that, the rest of the government people. Do you think they’re all spies?” she said, then glanced back at me with wide, blank eyes, “Oh, sorry. No offense.”  
“None taken,” I smiled, finishing my meal.  
“Are you a spy as well?” she asked me, still looking at me.  
“Not today,” I told her, “So, Hannah didn’t like it up here? Why did she come? What was she working on?”  
“She was a lab assistant to Doctor Sculder. Something about moon rocks in wands, which I think is quite silly,” she said dreamily, and I examined her face closely for any trace of irony. There was none, and Luna continued as she swallowed some egg, “She wasn’t very happy with her job, or how Sculder made her come up here to help him. She was seeing someone for a while, but they broke up, so she became even more miserable.”  
“Who was she seeing?” I asked.  
“A man on the French team. Leon Besson. He’s probably at work or asleep,” she said as I looked around the cafeteria for him. I saw Bradley and Jones approaching with their trays of food.  
“Where did you get to?” Bradley asked as they sat down, uninvited.  
“I was hungry,” I said simply.  
“You might have missed something,” Jones said.  
“Did I miss anything?” I replied.  
“Um, no,” said Jones.  
“Well then,” I smiled sarcastically, and continued to eat.  
“So, where are you going to start, then?” Bradley asked, “We’re going to look at the body first, I think. It seems like everyone is. It’ll be like a circus in that infirmary. I hope it’s not too gross. Have you ever seen what happens to a body when it’s frozen to death and then thawed too quickly?”  
“No,” said Jones.  
“It’s the same when you defrost meat. It goes all mushy. Frost crystals destroy the cell membranes, so when they melt, everything goes all gooey. Like old custard, or a bit like these scrambled eggs,” said Bradley, lifting up a forkful and letting it drop down onto his plate with a splat.  
“Excuse me,” said Luna, getting up from her stool quickly and rushing off with her tray. She had left a cold cup of tea behind.  
“Smooth,” I said icily.  
“Was that Luna Lovegood?” Jones asked.  
“Yeah. She was the last person to see Hannah alive. They were friends. Good work, Bradley,” I said, and he looked suitably abashed beneath his thick beard. I was tempted to go after her, but instead I got a second plate of what food was left after the rest of the newcomers had ravaged the buffet.  
I listened to Bradley and Jones discuss the lunar base while I ate quietly, and drank almost the entire jug of water from the table. I was determined to consume as much food as I could before I found my sleeping quarters. As soon as I finished, I excused myself and wandered out into the corridor, fiddling with the parcel William had given me, still strapped to my waist. I heard the tour guide rallying everyone up for the second part of their tour. I grinned as I let the doors swing shut behind me, saloon-style, and strode off to seek out the dormitories and sleeping quarters.

*

The corridors were proving more troublesome than I’d thought they would. The maps on the walls were large, detailed, and some thoughtful asshole had decided it was a good idea to orient the map differently on each wall, depending on which way you were facing when you looked at it. This made it more difficult to keep track of my sense of direction. Eventually I had made my way to the section of the buildings that accommodated all the sleeping quarters and communal bathrooms, but the maps kept looking upside down and the room numbers were printed in a variety of alphabets. As I was walking past one door, it slid open on noisy metal wheels. A woman came out wearing a towel, with another wrapped around her hair, rubbing one corner into her ear. She paused, looking at me, but kept rubbing her ear.  
“You arrive just now?” she asked, and I frowned at the sense of déjà vu.  
“On the last flight,” I said, and she nodded as she padded away, her bare feet slapping against the stone floors. I watched her go, and several doors down she reached her own room. She glanced back at me as she slid open her door on its metal wheels, rattling noisily in the silent corridor. Then she slid the door closed behind her, and I heard a lock click inside.  
As I walked down the corridor and turned a corner, thinking I was finally at the right place, I discovered that I wasn’t. I was far from it – but I did notice, with a sense of pleasant surprise, that I was on the same corridor as the sleeping quarters that had once belonged to Hannah. I decided now was a good time to check out her room for any clues, so I found the door number and slid it open. It was locked, of course, but that’s never really presented an obstacle to me. With my primary wand I flicked open the simple lock, making a mental note of how easy it was.  
The room inside was dark, so I lit my wand and peered inside, feeling a creepy sense of grave-robbing bubble up inside me. It shouldn’t surprise you that I’m familiar with the feeling. The room was large, with a decent-sized bed, a large desk and a small bookshelf with a few drawers where the lowest shelves should be. The wardrobe and drawers were all open – the contents had been thrown to the floor. The bedroom floor was littered with books, papers, bed sheets and several of the crumpled grey jumpsuits with their leather straps. I whispered to my wand, turning up the illumination, and saw that the bed had been stripped of its sheets, and the mattress itself torn apart, with lumps of foam and metal springs flung aside. The books had also been torn apart, littering the room with loose pages. As I stepped inside, something moved.  
“Hold it!” I demanded sternly, pulling out my second wand and pointing it into the room. I kept the lit one above my head – there was no sense pointing it into the room, because it would give whoever it was a target to aim at and also blind me to the darkness.  
“Wait!” someone said, and I heard him shuffle around in the dark room before he stepped out from behind the wardrobe.  
“Who are you?”  
“My name is Leon Besson. Who are you?”  
“I’m the one with a wand pointed at you,” I growled, “I’m asking the damn questions.”  
“I’m sorry,” he said, stepping forward again with both hands up in surrender.  
“What are you doing here?”  
“What are you?” he replied.  
“I said, I’m the one asking the questions,” I growled again.  
“Hannah was my girlfriend. I wanted something to remember her. There’s a light globe on the ceiling, you can switch it on with your lumos charm,” he said, pointing at the ceiling in the darkness. I was careful not to take my eyes off him while I enchanted the light, keeping my other wand pointed at the shadowy figure. The charm leapt from my wand and lit the white globe in the ceiling, and it was just as well that I’d been sensible, because he leapt at me. I summoned enough ropes to bind him, and he fell forwards onto me with his arms tied to his side. He screamed in surprise, and his weight hit into me, knocking us both over despite the low gravity. We rolled off of each other in slow motion, into the detritus of the floor. I was on my feet before he was, struggling in thin air before my boots made contact with the ground once more. I pointed both wands at him while he writhed amongst the jumpsuits and papers, still adjusting to being tied up in low gravity.  
“Stay the fuck still!” I roared.  
“Alright, I’m sorry. I’m very sorry,” he repeated.  
“What are you doing here?” I asked again.  
“I was just looking for a keepsake. Something to remember her. That’s the truth!”  
“Is it really?” I demanded, stepping back as he turned over.  
“Where is my wand?” he asked in a panic, wriggling again.  
“One thing at a time,” I muttered, glancing around at the room for it before returning my gaze to him.  
“Please don’t kill me,” he gasped.  
“I’m not going to kill you,” I said, looking him up and down suspiciously, “I’m part of the Institute’s Investigation Squad. Other governments have sent their own, but I’m with the independent team. Sent by Professor Doctor William Grey, himself. We’re here to investigate the death of Hannah Pierce. So, I’m not going to kill you, but I might have you arrested,” I said, my voice hiding the fact that I didn’t know how I would go about detaining him beyond these ropes, never mind that the threatening-sounding ‘Investigation Squad’ constituted myself and two ghosts, one of whom wasn’t even supposed to be up here.  
“I came to find something personal of hers that I could remember her by. But there’s nothing here! Please, that is the truth!”  
“Bullshit. I heard she dumped you,” I said.  
“Please, let me go,” he said, wriggling.  
“Someone killed her. And now I find you poking around her room,” I said, and summoned yet more rope.  
“No! Please! No more!”  
“The truth!”  
“Alright, fine, she… ‘dumped’ me. She had become… distant,” he said, gasping for breath while he struggled against the ropes.  
“So you killed her?” I demanded.  
“I didn’t!” he groaned, “Please, let me go.”  
“You were searching very hard, weren’t you,” I said, looking around the room once more, “Desperately, even.”  
“It was like this when I got here,” he said.  
“Yeah, bullshit,” I said in response.  
At that moment, someone wondered past the open door, and did a double-take into the room. The tall, white male looked at us both – Leon tied up on the floor and me, standing over him with two wands, and immediately drew his own wand, pointing it at me. He said something in a foreign language that I couldn’t understand, and stepped towards me angrily. I raised both of my hands in surrender, my wands still grasped between my thumbs and palms.  
After that, things became complicated. The man who had surprised Leon and I summoned more help, and eventually there was a whole group of people peering into Hannah’s room. Leon kept insisting loudly that it was just a misunderstanding, and that he was only ever looking for a keepsake in her old room. I released him grudgingly, and stepped out of the doorway with him behind me, confident that he wouldn’t try killing me now even if he had murdered Hannah. The tour group arrived just as I was explaining the ‘misunderstanding’ to someone senior, full of bossiness and pomposity. I watched Leon as he rushed away, and I saw Bradley and Jones staring after him too, responding to my dark gaze. That was when Jack appeared, floating up through the floor as usual.  
“Well, it looks like you’ve had a party, eh?” he commented, purposefully oblivious to the stares of the massive group surrounding him, all stepping back from his chilling presence.  
“It was just a misunderstanding,” I repeated for the fourteenth time, “I’m quite tired, and I thought I’d check out Hannah’s room. I surprised Leon Besson while he was looking for… a keepsake, to remember her. Perfectly understandable,” I said, looking pointedly at the generic senior woman, who was still looking furious. But she shrugged and nodded – an odd gesture, but it seemed she was relenting.  
“Sounds like cupid hit him hard,” Jack commented.  
“Could someone show me to my room? I’m sure that with a little rest I’ll be less jumpy,” I said, finally putting away my two wands.  
The bossy woman showed me to my room grumpily, and I pulled the door open. It slid into the wall on a set of squeaky, unseen wheels. I pulled it shut behind me, and leant against it, sighing heavily. I was aware of Jack watching me, and when I turned around I saw Melanie floating up through the floor. They stood close together as they both examined me with cold, unblinking, ghostly stares.  
The room was similar to Hannah’s. There was a simple bed, a wardrobe, a large desk and a bookshelf with a shelving unit in the lower half. I moved to the wardrobe, pulling it open. Sure enough, there was nothing there but jumpsuits. Someone thoughtful had filled the underwear drawer with those same coarse, white body-socks that I’d decided against back on Earth.  
“So, did that guy do it?” joked Jack.  
“He’s suspicious as hell, you have to admit,” I said.  
“Love makes people do strange things,” Melanie said, fiddling awkwardly with the leather belt around her neck. My own hand leaped to the strap around my own neck, loosening it gratefully.  
“Tell me about it,” I said, yawning heavily despite my wild-eyed alertness, “Did you guys look for Hannah’s ghost?”  
“We looked, yeah,” said Jack.  
“Any sign of her?”  
“There’s a whole world out there, Lucinda,” he said, “There must be a million acres of barren rocky wasteland, with the occasional magical doodad sticking out of the ground. I don’t reckon she’s left a ghost of herself behind, but if she had, we could never find it.”  
“Did you check her body?” I asked, “If there is a ghost, she’s probably lingering in familiar places.”  
“Hell, I don’t know if that means there’s a ghost of her back on Earth somewhere. But if there is, she’s not gonna be winning any beauty awards,” he said.  
“What do you mean?”  
“Her body is terribly decayed,” Melanie said with a sad frown, “She’s lying naked on a slab down in the back room of the infirmary. There are burns all down her back, we think. But her flesh is so… desiccated and destroyed, probably by the vacuum and the radiation…” Melanie trailed off.  
“Burns, eh? That’s interesting. And her space-suit?” I said, despite yawning again and pulling the black-fabric parcel from around my waist.  
“It was also burnt at the back. It had big holes in it. No wonder she died out there in the airless world. What’s that?” asked Melanie.  
“William gave it to me before the launch,” I said.  
“Ah, like I said. Love, eh?” she grinned.  
“Oh shush,” I said as I went to the desk and unwrapped the parcel on it. There was a large, A4 envelope, a wand, a sneakoscope, a short, thin stiletto dagger and a large brass telescope with deep lines and tiny, delicate runes.  
“Wow, that’s quite an instrument. And the telescope isn’t bad either!” Melanie joked.  
I tossed the sneakoscope over my shoulder, where it landed somewhere on the floor with a pleasingly damaging-sounding noise. I hate those little noisy devices – they always go off around me, and no matter how I tune them or charm them, I can never stop their devious little alarms.  
I opened the envelope. There was a sheaf of papers, a wad of photographs and a small piece of notepaper, originally rolled up but it had been pressed flat by the weight of the paperwork. I pushed the rolled up parchment aside for the time being, and rifled through the other paperwork. It was quickly apparent that I was looking at Hannah Pierce’s personal file. The first piece of paper told me the basic details of her life – her age, height, weight, hair colour, eye colour, skin colour, and a list of all the health conditions that she did and didn’t have. I noticed that she had hay fever, and with some sadness I noticed that her birthday had been only two weeks ago. There were also a couple of reports describing how they’d found her body – next to the crater of an explosion, which may well have been an asteroid impact to my eyes but the wizards and witches with geological and geographical expertise insisted it was a ground-level detonation. She had been discovered face-down, a long distance away from it. This fitted with what the ghosts had said, about her burn marks. Something behind her had exploded, burning and tearing holes in her space-suit, and she had been thrown forwards in the lunar gravity. If the explosion hadn’t killed her, the damage to her space-suit would have.  
The photos were all magical and moving. A profile photograph in which she looked nervous, her eyes and lips taught with anxiety. She hardly moved, but looked from the camera lens to whoever was operating it with a tiny change in the angle of her gaze. The next photo was of everyone in her launch group, taken before they boarded the space capsule. They were all standing in a line, looking at one another with beaming pride. The next photo was of her and her research associates, all standing outside a door with thick black letters spelling out ‘Lab Five’. Again there was the beaming pride, but now Hannah looked visibly paler, like the stress of living extra-terrestrially had been taking its toll. Then the photographer must have suggested a fun photo – one of the staff at the back was waving around a rubber snake, and everyone was laughing and relaxed. There was a boss-looking wizard with a thick white beard and a white, pointed wizard’s hat that was looking at everyone’s laughter disapprovingly. As I watched the photo, he seemed to be looking at Hannah with the most disapproval of them all.  
“Look at this one,” I said, pushing it across the desk to where Jack and Melanie could see it.  
“That’s a grumpy old man, eh?” Melanie commented.  
“You think he’s a suspect, just because he has a wand up his ass?” Jack said.  
“I’m not sure,” I said, having discovered a new vein of photos.  
These were all her birthday party in the cafeteria. It must have been a surprise party, because there was one photo in which everyone was wildly flailing their limbs in front of the lens while she leapt back in shock, her expression changing between a flash of initial fear, a long, lingering gasp of amazement and then an explosion of joy. It shifted back to the beginning of the short, looped time-frame, making everything in the photo seem weird and distorted. In another she was pictured laughing happily in close up, her eyes sparkling with happiness. I even found myself smiling at one in which she had cake smeared on her nose, and was trying to reach it with her tongue while people in the shadowy background appeared to laugh with her. There was one in which she blushed perpetually while everyone around her silently sang ‘Happy birthday’ with wild motions and vivid expressions. There was bunting, and a banner that read ‘Happy birthday’.  
And then there was another where she had linked arms with Leon Besson. But there were signs of that impending breakup. Another man had joined them, and there was something in Hannah’s eyes that made me linger on this photo. The new man had looped under the spare arm of Leon, and posed there like the three of them were best friends. Even Besson was smiling at the light-hearted playfulness, distracting him from the dark look in Hannah’s eyes that, from her photos, I was unaccustomed to seeing. There was something in Hannah’s eyes. I had seen it before – something that looked like anger before she adopted a smiling expression. The resolution on the photograph wasn’t high, but in the tiny blurry image of her eyes, I watched her gaze move from Besson to the newcomer, then linger on Besson while her expression hardened. I watched this happen again and again, several times, studying Hannah’s delicate, expressive face and darting eyes before I pushed the photo along the desk for Jack and Melanie. I hadn’t realised how close to the photograph my face had been, and I straightened my back with a click, stretching out my arms above my head wearily.  
“What about that one?” I asked them.  
“Ain’t that the guy who used to court her?” Jack asked.  
“Court? How romantic,” joked Melanie distractedly.  
“She don’t look entirely happy,” Jack said.  
“She looks scared, and angry,” Melanie added, “Maybe he really did do it.”  
“Her birthday was about two weeks ago. Well, a week and a half,” I said, looking at the first sheet of her personal file and then counting off days using my fingers. I could feel something lingering in the back of my mind. But whatever suspicions I felt forming were dashed apart by the ghosts chattering away next to me.  
“That’s real sad,” said Jack.  
“Where did these photographs come from?” asked Melanie.  
“I don’t know,” I said, turning at last to the lined notepaper, folded in half. I unfolded it, and instantly recognised William’s cramped, blocky handwriting.

‘Lucinda,  
I might not have said thank you yet, but I’m thanking you now. I’ve heard some things from Doctor Smith just now about people spying on one another up there, trying to learn each other’s magical secrets. There have been some disagreements. I’m sure you’re still in no danger, but I’m giving you this dagger just in case. I know you like to rely on other tools besides your wand. While I think of it, I might as well include another wand, too. It’s vitally important that you keep hold of one, at least. I’m also including a copy of Hannah’s file, and all the photos from it.  
See you when you land!  
Very sincerely yours,  
Prof Dr William M Grey  
PS. I’m told the stars are fantastic up there. I’ve seen some of the photos coming back from the observatories. You might as well borrow Smith’s telescope, if you find a spare moment to check them out. I suppose it can bulk out the parcel so that nobody recognises the dagger shape, too. If anyone asks, he definitely lent it to you, and I didn’t see it just lying on his desk.’

I couldn’t help but laugh at that last sentence, and the weariness briefly vanished. That strange, sneaking suspicion of a thought surfaced once more at the back of my mind, but again the ghosts interrupted whatever my mind was trying to tell me. They leant over each of my shoulders, reading the note. I pushed it across the desk for them to read, while I started to examine the telescope. I didn’t know what any of the runes would do, and peering through it only resulted in a bright, blurry circle imposing itself on my vision. I sighed, and put it in one of the drawers beneath the bookshelf.  
“Don’t let me forget to take that back to Earth,” I told the ghosts.  
“Yeah, it sounds like someone might be missing it,” said Melanie.  
“Do you think he gave it to you for a reason?” Jack asked.  
“I think he actually expects me to start looking at the stars,” I sighed, yawning again, “It’s not like he tried to disguise the dagger, or the wand, or Hannah’s file.”  
“Naïve, eh?” he grinned.  
“Not naïve. He’s just not a suspicious bastard like you. Or me,” I admitted diplomatically.  
“You look tired,” Melanie said kindly, “Why not get some sleep?”  
“These doors don’t lock for shit,” I said, pulling loose some of the other straps on the jumpsuit distractedly.  
“It’s okay, I can guard you,” Melanie said.  
“I guess I’ll go and keep an eye on this guy,” said Jack, pointing his ghostly finger at Leon Besson’s smiling face in the photos.  
“That sounds good. Thanks, Wilson,” I said, and it was barely another moment before my head hit the pillow and I heard Melanie saying something soothing and unimportant. My eyes fell shut gratefully, and I was asleep in much less time than I’d have thought possible in my extraordinary situation.

*

“You’re so beautiful when you sleep,” was the first thing as I flickered into consciousness. My eyes snapped open, meeting the pale, translucent, strangled stare of Melanie as she gazed at my face, inches away.  
“Fucking hell!” I exclaimed, drawing back across the hard pillow in shock.  
“Sorry! I’m sorry,” she said hurriedly, also drifting back across the bed and out into thin air, floating across the room, “But it’s been hours, and I got bored!”  
“Has anything happened?” I asked blearily.  
“Nothing at all. That’s the problem,” she sighed, “It’s just like being on bloody Earth.”  
“I thought you said you’d been here before?” I said, wiping the sleep from my eyes and discovering that I was still wearing the jumpsuit. The various leather straps and pockets had dug into my skin uncomfortably, and the wands had pushed into my breastbone, riding up uncomfortably close to my neck. It was stupid to have slept with one powerful wand pointed up at my head, let alone two, but I couldn’t help but smile at all the people who had warned me to stay close to my wand.  
“Well, I only came to see the sights and then went home again on the same journey. I’ve never hung around for so long. You people can be pretty boring sometimes,” she said.  
“You people?”  
“You living people,” she corrected herself.  
“Is there anything to report? At all?” I asked, getting out of bed and finding myself almost float across the room in a strange descending arc until I remembered the low gravity and managed to get one of my boots onto the floor.  
“Nope!” said Melanie, becoming happier now that I had calmed down.  
“How long was I asleep?”  
“It’s hard to tell, up here. The sun moves slowly, and the Earth moves far too fast considering it’s the Earth, you know?”  
“I can imagine,” I said, doing up my jumpsuit.  
“There’s a bathroom two doors to the left, on the other side of the corridor,” Melanie told me.  
“Thanks,” I said, and I was about to leave the room until Melanie coughed meaningfully and nodded at the large desk, with the papers, telescope, spare wand and the elegant stiletto dagger.  
Without a word, I put the spare wand in a pocket at my hip. I was now carrying three wands, which felt scarily powerful. I pushed the stiletto dagger into its sheath, and strapped it to my calf with the leather belt holding my jumpsuit taught beneath my boot. The handle of the dagger now projected slightly above the thick leather of my boot, easily reachable with my left hand. I left the useless sneakoscope where I had thrown it on the floor. I could only put the personal file into the top drawer beneath the bookshelves, and I discovered the telescope where I had stashed it. I looked it at it again with eyes refreshed by sleep. It was heavy in my hand, the extending sections clanking quietly as I examined the runes.  
“There are observatories here, right?” I asked Melanie, and she shrugged.  
“I guess so. I kept hearing people mention them, before you went to sleep,” she said.  
“Are there also, like, viewing balconies? Where we can look out at the moon? Look at the landscape?”  
“I noticed a few marked on the map, yeah. The external wall is pretty much a circle, and there’s balconies in each direction. What’re you thinking?”  
“I think I’d quite like to look out a window,” I said truthfully, putting the pouch on around my waist and sliding the telescope into it carefully.  
The only artefact I had left was the note from William, which had a lot of details and information. If I was in a base riddled with espionage and distrust, I’d be foolish to leave this letter lying around. So I stuffed it into a pocket of my jumpsuit.  
I made a quick detour to the bathroom, which was mercifully unlocked. It was a large room, covered in white tiles. It had a single sink, a shower and what I assumed was a toilet. I had drunk a lot of ice water during the previous day, and it needed to come out. Of course, this was more complicated than it needed to be because of the bizarre low-gravity toilets. I was reluctant to have a shower, given what I’d experienced, but the stickiness of the night had been building up inside my jumpsuit and I was desperate to get naked for a little while. The water moved through the air slowly, in droplets so large they could be described as globes. There was a dispenser on the wall that I pushed down to receive a squirt of some kind of cleansing gel. I collected several handfuls, and rubbed it over my face and body, feeling the strange water splash on my skin in slow motion. It was hard to wash the foam away, but after I spent a while scooping handfuls of slow-moving water into my armpits and body I finally started to feel clean.  
From the lack of towels, I had to assume that I needed to use my wand to dry myself. There was a lot of water splashed over the floor that I also tidied up with my wand, and then I put my jumpsuit back on, feeling clean and refreshed. I strongly suspected that Melanie had been spying on me, but as I unlocked the bathroom door and slid it aside, Jack was there to greet me.  
“Melanie came and got me. She said you were awake,” he said.  
“Has Leon done anything?”  
“Nothing. He went to sleep shortly after you. For a little while I thought he was about to start tugging the old jerky, if you know what I mean, because he was stroking a framed portrait of the chick in question. But he had a little weep and then he was catching Z’s, as the kids used to say. If you ask me, that is one messed up guy,” he said, glancing up and down the corridor cautiously as he spoke.  
“Excellent. Keep on him. Tell Melanie to keep an eye on Bradley and Jones. I might as well pay attention to their results too, eh?”  
“Might as well,” grinned Jack.  
“Any advice, before you go?” I said.  
“We’ve checked the body, the witness to her last moment, and any prime suspects,” he said, counting on his fingers, “You know her room has been compromised, but it might be worth going over it without an interruption. You should check the murder scene.”  
“I was just about to from the safety of a balcony,” I said, tapping the telescope in the pouch at my waist. “You didn’t check it yourself?”  
“We both did, Melanie and me. Nothing that we saw,” he said quietly.  
“You were pretty distracted, I guess?” I said, ceasing my stride and turning to face him.  
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck.  
“Lucky thing I have this, eh?” I said.  
“I’m still not convinced that it’s just luck,” Jack sniffed.  
“Well, it’s more your luck than mine. If I had to actually walk across the damn surface of the moon just to look at a crater because you and her were too busy fondling each other’s ghostly goolies, then you’d be in a whole world of trouble,” I said angrily.  
“Yeah, sorry. But there really was nothing to see. Nothing but a whole bunch of footprints from the people who carried her body in, a crater, and the place her body landed,” he shrugged.  
“Very useful. You didn’t follow the footprints, I suppose?” I growled, resuming my pace.  
“Nice to see that the early hour hasn’t soured your mood, dollface,” he said with a tip of the hat, and descended into the floor. I aimed a kick at his head, wondering why I’d even brought him along on this mission, but he had vanished before I managed to flail at him in the low gravity.  
I had counted on there being footprints. With no weather of any kind, let alone wind, the moon dust preserved every imprint perfectly. Somewhere on this world, there were still muggle tracks and artefacts covering tiny patches of the landscape. Somewhere up here there was a U.S. flag and a couple of machines that they’d left behind, along with a plaque that they’d installed. I wondered idly what they would think if they knew we were up here now, whizzing about with magic and murder instead of their slow technology, but I pushed these thoughts aside as I tried once more to find my way through the winding corridors of the lunar base.  
I had carefully worked out where I needed to go, cross-referencing the airlock that Hannah had exited from with the location her body had been found, and choosing somewhere I could see these places from. I went past the cafeteria, deciding against breakfast since my circadian rhythms were so confused. With a bit of sleep and a shower, strange though it had been, I was figuring out the maps much more easily. I made my way past several of the private laboratories, one of which had been Hannah’s – Lab Five. Eventually I found a long, long ladder that led up to an external balcony, from which I could look over the landscape surrounding the lunar base. I stepped out onto the balcony, slightly out of breath from the ladder despite the low gravity.  
The balcony was a semicircle of stone, sticking out of the solid, unbroken wall like a blister. The upper half of the semicircle was a tall oval of magical glass, reinforced with copper bands and rivets that held the thick glass in place. Everything was covered in runes, as it seemed was usual with anything that was exposed to the external atmosphere. This made it quite hard to see through the glass plating. There was enough ambient light bouncing off the pale landscape in front of me that I was lit from beneath by a pale glow. I looked up at the building behind me, at the pinnacle of the oval of glass, but all I could see was the tall, stone wall that was, of course, also covered in runes. Poking out above it were the edges of gigantic magical telescopes. I strode to the edge of the balcony and looked out at the desolate environment below me, and I discovered I was at a dizzying height above the surface. In fact the environment wasn’t completely desolate.  
There is no wind on the moon. Footprints basically last forever, and they have really good definition because of something to do with static cling or something. Below me, I could see where the cluster of tracks converged at the main airlock door for this side of the base. The tracks split off into hundreds of various directions, all over the moon, but I could see that there was a thick block of them that stretched out like caterpillar tracks towards a distant point on the white sand. Around the terrain there were also a variety of weird machines, presumably sensors and remote telescopes, and maybe a few of Luna’s Snorkack detectors. I pulled the telescope out of the bag at my waist and lifted it to my eye. I found myself staring down at the far-away crater, no matter which direction I pointed the telescope. I could feel the runes tingling beneath my fingers as their magic activated. A lot of people were standing around the crater from the explosion that had killed Hannah, and I watched their little bodies wandering around like they were dolls in heavy, clumsy, clunky space-suits. They were running their wands over the edges of the crater, and around the print that her body had left when it landed. From their body language, it seemed like they weren’t getting any results. The whole history of the case was visible in those footprints. I wasn’t surprised that the other investigators hadn’t followed them, but I was astonished that Jack hadn’t. He was clearly more distracted than I realised. I would have to talk to him.  
Most recently, I could see the footprints from the airlock directly to the crater. These were probably the people who were still out there, even now, pointlessly examining the useless rock. There were also footprints stretching out in every direction and with the telescope’s help, I could see how they traced across the landscape in a highly organised search pattern. And then beneath that, with all these more recent footprints stamped over them, I could see the paths of the regular researchers. There were only a couple of tracks that led to the left. They led out across the dust, perfectly preserved. I couldn’t figure out what was attracting them to me at first, but there was something. I finally realised that there was a set of tracks very widely spaced out, as if whoever it was had bounced along from leg to leg, moving as fast as they could on the lunar surface.  
There was a second stamped over them, coming afterwards. Once they got away from the main traffic lines, it was easier to see the pattern. The second tracks proceeded in a directly straight line. You could almost see it traced out in time, because when Hannah changed direction the pursuer changed direction too, sometimes barely fifteen feet behind her. Only someone who was looking would notice the scorch marks as the tracks snaked across the landscape. She would have bounced along as the spells and curses had rained down. She had ducked into a crater, and there was a huge mess of marks where she had rolled down the slope. It also looked like she had tried to take cover behind one of the mysterious magical devices out in the wasteland. Unlike the other investigators poking at the main explosion, I was sure that I was looking at the last moments of Hannah’s life. She had been hunted across an alien landscape, fired upon repeatedly, chased down by someone intent on killing her.  
I made a mental note to check the rest of the space-suits, in case there were any clues there. And then I drank in the lunar landscape, wondering at the situation I had found myself in for several minutes. It was a good thing I did, because I saw something I would have missed otherwise. Crawling out on the rim of one of the telescopes poking out over the wall above me, there was a tiny figure wearing a harness over the miniature space-suit. It was hard to judge the scale of the figure, but I estimated that the little humanoid working on the telescope was a house-elf. This was good news – if there were elves here, they’d definitely know something. On Earth, the elves are one of my best sources of information.  
I left the balcony with one last lingering look at the bright stars. On the map in the corridor, I looked for where the elves might be staying. I remembered William employing them as maintenance and technician specialists at the Institute. Sure enough, there was a set of smaller corridors off at the side of the map, burrowed away in one corner, with a couple of chambers and dozens of small bedrooms. I couldn’t tell from the map how many elves were up here – I hadn’t even seen a single one, but that wasn’t unusual in a big place like this. I tracked down the elves quarters eventually, but the corridors here were slightly less well-lit, and a slight discolouration of moon dust had built up at the sides of the floors. Elves rarely walk anywhere and the humans had no cause to visit this part of the facility very often. Eventually, I found the short door in the wall. It was locked. I knocked on it gently, bringing a cloud of dust from it.  
Instead of the door opening, an elf appeared in front of me. I’m used to this – I’ve made contact with a fair number of elvish strongholds in my time – but it still took me by surprise. The elf looked up at me brightly with a smile. She was wearing a jumpsuit similar to mine, but holding many more tools. I recognised a few basic ones, like spanners and wrenches, but a lot of them were like wands studded with enchanted runes and gems. Elves have no need of wands, possessing their own innate magic, and many wizards would be aghast at the concept of an elf owning one, let alone several. And yet, here was this little elf standing in front of me, bristling with power, her hands in her pockets nonchalantly.  
“Hello,” I said.  
“Bonjour,” she replied.  
“Do you speak English?”  
“Yes, a little.”  
“How about this?” I asked darkly, and said a certain word. It was an elvish word, and only one of a handful that had survived down the ages of their slavery and oppression. As far as I know, I can count on one hand the wizards who even know of this ancient, dead language. My knowledge of it was part of what triggered a recent elvish revolution in Russia. A lot of elves don’t even know it, since it’s not like there was a school for them to attend or even any academic mention of the language for the past several centuries. The word I said to this young elf meant cooperation and friendship.  
She looked up at me, and narrowed her eyes, her bright smile fading as she took her hands out of her pockets. She said the elvish word for questioning, and I replied with one that meant seek/search/find. I felt this was fairly meaningless, though, so I followed it up.  
“I’m here to investigate the death of Hannah Pierce. William Grey sent me,” I said, hoping the elf’s gratitude to William would help me.  
“You’re her, aren’t you,” she said, and it wasn’t a question.  
“Who?”  
“Baker. The woman who was there in Russia when the Svobodny El-fov rose. When the elves started to rebel against their Russian masters,” she said in a whisper, thickening her French accent.  
“Yes. I was there. Now I’m here. I’m investigating the death of Hannah Pierce,” I repeated.  
“Hannah Pierce? The witch who was murdered?”  
“Hence the investigation into her death,” I said.  
“There are a lot of government types poking around. They look like idiots,” she said.  
“A lot of them probably are. Have any of them spoken to the elves?”  
“No,” she said.  
“Well, there you are then. Idiots. Have you heard anything?”  
“Why don’t you come inside,” she said, touching the door with one finger, causing it to spring open violently with a bigger cloud of dust.  
The passage beyond the door was much cleaner, with pictures stuck to the walls and doodles that had been both carved and drawn with inks and crayons. I smiled at all the childish sketches of trees and bushes, and there were several styles of green fields and rolling hills. One of the elves was drawing on the wall with a red crayon, that he tucked guiltily into a pocket of his jumpsuit as he looked up and saw me.  
“I like your drawings,” I said to the elf who had greeted me.  
“They’re not mine,” she said, “But some of us like to make these sterile corridors friendly, you know?”  
“Like cave paintings,” I said, noticing several elvish symbols amongst the scrawls and doodles – cooperation, trust, solidarity, collection.  
“What is she doing here?” demanded one of the elves, appearing behind me. This one was elderly, wearing thick glasses.  
“This is the Baker woman,” said the elf next to me.  
“This is her? We heard you were here. It was only a matter of time until you came to see us,” said the elderly elf, clutching at the magical tools in the belt around his waist.  
“I want to know anything you know about Hannah Pierce,” I demanded, eager to skip the dramatics.  
“We have heard nothing about Hannah Pierce,” said another elf, appearing behind me.  
“Anything generally suspicious?” I asked them, as more popped out of the air in the corridor.  
“Come this way,” sighed the elderly elf, inviting me deeper into the corridor. The ceilings were high and spacious for elves, but too low for a human. I kept banging against my head as I stumbled down the corridor after the elf, past small doorways. Inside them, I could see workshops and tool benches with elves tinkering and toying with various magical artefacts. After only a few of these small rooms and a short distance down the main corridor, the elderly elf led me into the common room and cafeteria of the elves. It was several stories tall, but every inch of wall was decorated in the same haphazard, low-tech way. Normal-sized mugs and plates littered the surfaces, each individually decorated. The cupboards were all low enough for elves to reach them comfortably.  
“Were those workshops that I saw?” I asked the elderly elf.  
“They were. Our work here requires some craftsmanship. We are not as competent or skilled as goblins, or even some wizards, but the Professor Doctor asked that we learn to build and maintain our own tools. Please, have a seat,” he said, gesturing with his finger and magically pulling out a small chair at one of the tiny tables. I sat on it, but ended up crossing my legs on the floor. The elves that had gathered in the corridor were now filing quietly into the common room, watching me carefully.  
“Would you care for any tea? I’m afraid we only have powdered milk,” he said.  
“Thank you,” I said while the elf levitated a teapot into his hands from across the room. I accepted – I didn’t want it, but I have too much respect for elderly elves who display generosity towards wizards to refuse his gesture.  
“My name is Tog. I’m pleased to meet you. This is a strange place, isn’t it?” he said.  
“This room?”  
“This planet,” he said, as he watched the tea from the teapot fall slowly into the cup in large fluid globes. Steam billowed off them in large, vague clouds, moving lazily in the lunar gravity.  
“Pretty strange,” I said, with half a laugh.  
“This room is one of the most normal things here. You know, most of the witches and wizards here are from countries that still oppress elves. At best, they hardly give us a second thought. At worst, they are still cruel, treating us like animals or toys. This section of the lunar base is our haven from that. Our little home away from home,” he said, pouring tea for himself, “We like it that way. Some of us might have friends with the witches or wizards out there, and of course the department heads are all decently polite. We’re in charge of construction and maintenance up here, so if anyone ever mistreats us then they’re sure to apologise quickly. We have a nice little place, Miss Baker. I hope you don’t take this the wrong way, because I don’t mean to be rude, but none of us want any trouble. We’d just as soon keep ourselves to ourselves and get on with our work, you understand?”  
“I understand, Tog. I can certainly appreciate your position. I don’t mean you any harm. If you could tell me what you know, I’d be very grateful. I know how gossip must spread in such a small community,” I said with a slight smile that I meant to be comforting.  
“Was that a height joke?” Tog snapped, his eyes suddenly wide with indignation. I held his eyes resolutely with my own flat, unimpressed expression. The moment stretched out for one, two, three seconds. The other elves in the room leaned in, wide eyes staring back and forth between us. Eventually, Tog grinned a wide grin, and I allowed myself a genuine smile.  
“You have character,” he said, “You’d be surprised how easy it is to embarrass a human.”  
“Believe me, I know,” I replied, “So, why are you evading the question, eh? What do you all know?”  
“We don’t know anything. But we spend a lot of time in the laboratories, observatories and offices. A lot of the time we’re cleaning air vents and sweeping corridors, stuff like that. We hear stuff, we see things.”  
“So what have you heard? What have you seen?”  
“This place is riddled with suspicion. There are so many government spies up here even before the violence, so many jealous wizards and ambitious experts. And they’re all working so closely together, with thin walls and nowhere else to go. They spend about as much time spying on each other as they do working on actual research.”  
“Did Hannah ever involve herself in any spying?”  
“Not that we ever saw,” Tog said, looking around with an inquiring gaze. I followed his powerful stare, and saw a lot of elves agreeing with him, or shrugging their shoulders.  
“Did anyone here know Hannah well?” I asked.  
“We were all familiar with her in some way. She was one of these new English wizards, growing up with free elves and the Elf Liberation Foundation, you know? It was almost embarrassing how kind she was to us, like she was trying to make up for generations of slavery.”  
“I know the type. It’s as sweet as it is sad, you know?”  
“It’s better than the alternative,” Tog said with a shrug.  
“I made her birthday cake. It was vanilla sponge!” said one of the elves enthusiastically, “She said it was her favourite! Vanilla sponge with jam, but no cream. We had to borrow some eggs from the main kitchen!” The other elves all hushed the speaker quietly, which I ignored.  
“Did you know her well?” I asked this elf.  
“We were friends. I was there for her when she broke up with that Frenchman after her birthday.”  
“Did she say why they broke up?”  
“Well, not really. It was all a bit vague, and she was so upset that I didn’t want to ask.”  
“Did she say anything at all?” I said.  
“Oh, I don’t know. We were mostly just going over the fond memories while she cried,” said the elf sadly, her ears drooping beneath her chin.  
“So she still loved Leon, then?” I asked, puzzled.  
“The way she was talking, it seemed like it.”  
“Did she have any enemies?” I asked, deciding to try a different line of questioning. I glanced at Tog as well when I asked this, opening up the floor to others once more with my body language.  
“None, really,” said the sad elf at the side of the room.  
“What do you mean, none really?” I asked.  
“Miss Baker, every wizard or witch up here is an enemy of all the others. They compete. Their nations have histories. It’s a very suspicious environment,” said Tog, taking a delicate sip of his tea, “I’ve told you this already.”  
“No specific enemies, then?”  
“Apart from her boyfriend and his friends, no. None.”  
“His friends?”  
“Well, none of them were very happy about how she dumped him. She argued with several of them,” said Tog, finishing his tea with a slurp.  
“Any particular one?” I asked.  
“Well, there was one,” said one of the male elves near the doorway, trying to hide behind the wall shyly.  
“One?” I asked.  
“Hannah made me promise not to say anything,” said the elf, cringing.  
“Do you think it might be related to her death?” I said, swivelling on my chair awkwardly, “What happened?”  
“But I promised,” said the elf meekly, withering under the gaze of the community.  
“It might help bring her killer to justice,” I said. There was a long moment where the elf mentally wrestled with himself, then seemed to be very unhappy as he continued to speak.  
“Well, I was outside, renewing the enchantments on one of the external lights. This was back during the last night, so the lights are pretty important. For the people on lunar walks and us elves who keep the runes from being damaged,” he wittered distractedly.  
“What did you see?” I asked.  
“They were inside one of the balconies, so I couldn’t hear them. I don’t know what they were arguing about, but he was looking around all over the place like he was being hunted or something. I mean, I remember thinking that was pretty weird at the time. There’s only one door into the balcony, it’s not like he was exposed or anything,” he said with a shrug. “He grabbed her arm, and she pulled away, and then he slapped her, so I apparated into the balcony and told him to stop it. So he stormed off in a proper huff.”  
“Wait, he slapped her?” said the cake-baking girl elf, alarmed.  
“Who was it?” I asked.  
“Leon’s best friend,” he said.  
“You never told us any of this!” said the girl elf, scandalised.  
“Like I said, Hannah made me promise not to,” the other elf whined nervously, “I didn’t want to get her in trouble!”  
“So… what do we think?” asked the cake-making elf, “That… that Charles was somehow involved?”  
From all the assembled elves there was a rustle of whispering, sidelong glances and uncomfortable shifting.  
“There’s no need to jump to any conclusions,” I urged her, glancing at Tog’s clouded expression, “There’s every chance that these things are unrelated to her death.”  
“I won’t believe it was Leon,” she said, “I mean, he was the one who told me that vanilla sponge was her favourite! And why should his friends kill her over this?”  
“Why indeed,” I mused while the elves started muttering amongst themselves, “So, this Charles guy. Does anyone know his last name?”  
“I think it is Charles Guetta.”  
“And yours?” I asked the elves who had been speaking.  
“Ados,” said the cake-baker.  
“Floor,” said the elf who had seen Charles Guetta hit Hannah.  
“I may need to speak to you both later on, if that’s okay?” I said.  
“We’ll need to research the rights of elves that get called as witnesses for murder trials,” said Tog in a firm tone of voice.  
“They will have full protection,” I told him.  
“Let me guess, they’re protected by the ownership of their masters,” said Tog.  
“But we have no masters,” said Ados, still looking distressed by the news that Hannah had been slapped.  
“There might not even be a legal precedent,” said Tog.  
“I mean mine. My personal protection,” I said.  
“I see,” replied Tog, looking interested.  
“How are you going to research this?” I asked, “Do you have a legal library on this moon-base? Or do you have some way to communicate with the Earth? You surely can’t apparate that far!”  
“Of course not, no. But we have an enchanted mirror to communicate with the elves on the Earth-side Institute in our own departmental office. We mainly use it to place orders for equipment, materials and food. But it’s a direct line to our own people, millions of miles away. I don’t need to tell you how useful that can be,” said Tog.  
“I see. That’s pretty interesting. What else is on this base that I don’t know about?” I asked.  
“Oh, probably a hell of a lot,” he said, laughing warmly.  
“Would you mind educating me?” I asked him.  
“Well, let’s have another cup of tea. Did you go on the welcome tour?”  
“I went straight to the cafeteria as soon as I arrived,” I said softly. Tog laughed again, and pushed his glasses up his nose with one flick of a magical finger.  
“So the great Miss Baker is human after all, eh? That’s just as well, really. They only show you the surface, on that tour. The big shiny sophisticated magical equipment that they’ve installed. I’ve got a feeling you want to know about the gutters and the guts,” he said.  
“Definitely. All the gutters, and all the guts. Every pipe, laundry room and locker room. Every unused space, every dusty, dark little corner. That would be perfect,” I said enthusiastically.  
“What are you looking for?” Floor asked me, from where he was still shyly hiding at the doorway.  
“I’ll know when I see it,” I said.  
Tog poured us both another cup of tea, which again I didn’t care for but was too polite to refuse. I drank it while he explained why there was no Lab Four or Thirteen, because of the superstitions of the various international wizards. He explained what happened to the waste from the toilets – how liquid waste went to a special tank, and solid waste went to another. Food scraps went into this second tank as well. There was a third chamber for discarded magical items or equipment that the elves carefully sorted through and compressed into a fourth chamber. The first two chambers were loaded into the capsule returning to Earth and jettisoned, to be burnt up in Earth’s atmosphere. The fourth chamber was stored up and fired into space from the launch tower at month-long intervals, on a course carefully calculated to take the dangerous materials into the sun itself.  
I was told the air vents that riddled the entire building were cramped. Scandalously so, according to the elves who cleaned them regularly. If not for their innate ability to apparate, they told me they’d suffer from intense claustrophobia. There were long tubes and tunnels that contained the cables and wires that manipulated the telescopes, the pulleys of which needed to be oiled and greased regularly. It sounded like there were hundreds of spots on top of the building that had romantic views of Earth that some courting elf couples liked to visit in their free time – I remembered Melanie laughing at Jack’s use of the word ‘court’, and tried not to smirk at Tog’s use of the word now. I was told about the warehouse spaces that kept the food and toiletries fresh by enchantment, and the various parts of the building that were kept dark because nobody used them. It sounded like the facility had originally been designed to hold a lot more people and projects. They might be occupied later on, as long as the scandal of Hannah Pierce didn’t affect people’s interest in the programme.  
I listened patiently to all of his, logging it all away in my efficient mind. I wasn’t sure yet whether any of it might be pertinent, of course, but this is how I work – I hoard information, and one day some of it becomes useful. Even if none of what the elves told me was relevant to my current investigation, it was all still a valuable resource.  
“Do you have maps?” I asked.  
“We have dozens of maps. There’s maps of the air vents laid over the corridor layout, there’s maps of the sewage system cross-referenced over the air vents. There’s the sewage system laid over the cable systems. There’s the corridors laid over all three, but that’s so many lines that it’s barely useful. Which would you prefer?” he asked me.  
“Good grief. Okay, I suppose they’re fairly irrelevant,” I sighed.  
“If you think they can be of any use, they’re yours at any time,” said Ados defiantly, her ears perking up.  
“Any time,” Tog repeated, looking from Ados to me.  
“We saw that her room had been ransacked. Was anything taken?” Ados asked.  
“I’m not sure. It’s not like anyone had a list of her possessions. Are you thinking of anything in particular?”  
“I just hate the thought of someone going through her stuff so violently,” she said.  
“Well, there’s no way to account for something that isn’t there,” I said, reaching for my cup of tea. My hand froze halfway to it as the echoes of what I had said repeated over in my mind, and I frowned as I tried to focus.  
“Miss Baker?” I heard Tog asking, but it sounded far away as my thoughts started to crystalise.  
“Something that isn’t there,” I whispered.  
“What?”  
“Her wand! Nobody’s mentioned her wand. It’s not been mentioned in any of the reports of her recovered body. Did she have it when she was killed? Where did it go?”  
“She must have lost it somewhere,” Tog said.  
“Rule one. Always keep hold of your wand,” I said, patting my pouches, “She didn’t lose it. It was taken from her. But why not just leave it lying on the surface, along with the blast marks?”  
“Isn’t there a spell that can reveal the last spell cast by a wand?” asked Tog, “Maybe it’s because of that.”  
“That doesn’t reveal anyone’s identity though. Anyway, you said something about disposing of magical materials. How the magical waste is stored up and fired into the sun?” I asked him, standing up.  
“Yes?”  
“When was it last emptied?” I demanded.  
“About three weeks ago. It’s due to be emptied again today sometime,” Tog said, also standing up.  
“Move fast. Talk to whoever you need to. Tell them I need to examine all of that material,” I said.  
“There’s probably a lot of powerful, dangerous stuff in there,” Tog warned, “And a lot of it is probably sensitive, like the waste from secret research.”  
“Tell them a woman died, and we need clues,” I said flatly, “And tell them I’m operating on a mandate from the highest levels of the Insitute. I’m here to find a killer, damn it!” Tog disappeared suddenly, and I turned to Floor, still lingering by the doorway, “Is there anywhere I can use to examine the contents of the waste container? Somewhere big, where I can spread everything out? Somewhere safe?” I asked him.  
“You think someone tried to just throw her wand away?”  
“Like old rubbish,” I muttered.

*

I had adopted an empty warehouse space with high, dark ceilings but well-lit walls, spilling bright light out onto the floor. I had also set up several tall lamps in the centre of the room. The sacks of magical refuse had been decanted from their shielded container and carried up to the warehouse by nervous elves – then emptied out onto the warehouse floor, and spread out over the sheets I’d laid out. The elves were all standing to the side, wearing space-suits, reluctant to go any closer to dangerous spread of potion ooze and broken charms. I was also wearing a space-suit, standing with the elves and about to clip the helmet into place.  
I’d checked out the space-suit locker room as well, making sure there were no strange sights. There was a book to sign the suits in and out, which apparently also served as a record for who was out on the lunar surface. However, this was the only way that any of the staff knew who was out and who wasn’t – it would be easy to take a suit and ‘forget’ to sign it out, leaving no evidence that you’d been outside the base. Security up here was a joke but now nobody was laughing.  
I clasped the helmet in place awkwardly, and the sound around me was muffled. I’d considered asking Bradley and Jones to help me in my search, but from the signing out book in the suit-room I could see they were still out on the surface. I imagined them arguing about the significance of the dispersal of moon-pebbles. I wondered idly if they’d noticed the tracks yet. With my wand, I flicked aside some of the magic rubbish and began rooting through it. Ninety per cent of it was paper, scrunched up or burnt. The remaining fragments were covered with runic calculations and arithmancy, but these were usually all coated with the slime of old potions. There were a lot of pieces of broken metal and glass, lots of ornately carved plates and frames. I sighed, wondering if there wasn’t a more responsible way of recycling or removing some of this stuff. Several times as my space-boots crunched over the refuse, potions and enchantments would crackle noisily, giving off brightly coloured sparks. The elves at the sides of the room would all wince back suddenly, but at least the tedium of the chore was relieved briefly. The process was long. After about an hour, I had pored over half of the warehouse floor.  
The warehouse doors were thrown open, and a group of wizards entered, blinking in the light.  
“What the devil do you think you are doing?” demanded one of them, his voice muffled and distant.  
“I’m sorry?” I said, standing at the centre of the room beneath the bright lights, cupping my hand to the helmet to mime that I couldn’t hear him.  
“What’s going on here?” he said.  
“Hold on, I’ll come over,” I shouted, and retraced my steps through the pile of rubbish, careful not to disturb anything. It took me a few minutes to make my way around the edge of the large space, but I didn’t unclip my helmet until I stood with the wizards at the wide doorway to the industrial-size corridor outside.  
“What seems to be the trouble?” I asked sweetly.  
“You cannot do this!” said one of the wizards in a Russian accent, his long thin beard twitching.  
“What are you doing?” asked another, his voice cracking with anger.  
“Looking for clues,” I said.  
“What sort of clues do you expect to find?” one of them said angrily.  
“The sort of clues that might lead me to discover Hannah’s killer,” I said, “Why does that make you nervous?”  
“I believe you are looking through our work to discover our secrets!” one of them snapped. I couldn’t tell which one it was – they all looked so angry.  
“I believe you are trying conceal vital evidence!” I snapped back, “Evidence that might link you to her murder!”  
“Who?”  
“All of you!” I shouted, with a dramatic twirl.  
“That’s absurd!” exclaimed one, but the rest were all casting suspicious looks at one another.  
“Then let me complete my work!” I said, “Or admit your guilt immediately! In front of all these witnesses!”  
“We will let you search the rubbish. But we demand to oversee the process,” said one of the wizards with an incredibly posh British accent.  
“Demand?”  
“Request,” he corrected himself, withering slightly.  
“You can certainly oversee it. But keep back. Even the elves are nervous,” I said, pointing to where the miniature figures were still clustered at the wall anxiously. I clipped my helmet back on, and resumed my search. I was determined not to look up at the crowd gathering at the door – I hate being the focus of attention. I prefer to operate in the shadows, dealing in whispers and secrets. Now I was plodding around in a giant suit, in the middle of a brightly lit room, with an audience. I couldn’t hear anything and I had no peripheral vision. Luckily, just as I was nearing the end of the entire load, I found something that made it all worthwhile.  
Bending down to pick it up with big, clumsy space-gloves, I nearly destroyed the fragile thing. I had to push aside a large ceramic tile with a rune on it, and dig it out of a drift of moist ashes that had built up. It was a broken wand, the threads inside it still holding the two wooden halves together, dangling from each other loosely. Around the break, the wood was horribly splintered, like the flexible fibres of the wood hadn’t broken cleanly and they’d needed to be twisted until they separated. I carried it delicately to Ados the elf, who cradled it like a baby. I thanked her, and beckoned for her and Floor to follow me around the room.  
“Back away, please, ladies and gentlemen,” I muttered, removing my helmet. The ooze on my space-boots started to affect whatever enchantment was helping me stick to the ground. “Is there an office I can use?” I asked the wizards, who nodded, and told me that conference room E12 was free.  
“Excellent. Floor, could you go and fetch me Bradley? He knows a bit of wand-lore. Tell him to meet me in conference room E12,” I said to the male elf, who vanished immediately.  
“What about all this mess?” demanded one of the wizards.  
“I’m not done yet,” I said, and replaced my helmet. I returned to the warehouse, keeping Ados close to me with the fragile remains of the wand. For another ten or fifteen minutes I scanned the rest of the rubbish, finishing the entire load just to be sure. I nodded at the elves at the far side of the room, but rather than starting to bundle up the sheets and apparate away with the waste, they started spreading out across the edge of the warehouse.  
“What’s going on?” I asked.  
“Eh?” said Ados, but the sound was muffled through two space-helmets.  
“What?”  
“What did you say?” she shouted.  
“What’s going on?” I bellowed back.  
“We’re going to check, too!”  
“Well, it was nice of you to let me go first,” I muttered, feeling the sticking charms in my boots finally fail.  
I let the elves get on with combing through the rubbish, all of them staring from left to right as they slowly walked across the warehouse floor. I assumed they were doing it for Hannah’s sake, because I certainly hadn’t asked them to. With Ados following me, I moon-bounced my way back to the space-suit locker-room and slowly managed to dismantle the leather and metal outfit. There were directions on the walls, in various languages, but the process was still confusing and complicated. I ended up having to take off the jump suit as well, with all its straps, zips and pockets. Then I disconnected my jump suit from the space-suit and slid the jump-suit back on. I noted in the log book that the boots of the suit I’d borrowed had been damaged. There was also a tag to hang on the locker – ‘Do not use damaged suit’ in big red letters on a sign that screamed when you touched it. I took the wand from Ados, thanking her kindly, and she vanished as I folded the broken wand gently into a piece of paper. I put my own boots back on, glad to be once again anchored properly to the ground.  
I should probably have hurried to meet Bradley in room E12, but first I had to stop at the main administration offices on a hunch. There were only three witches working here, scribbling diligently away at parchments in an office with filing cabinets forming all the walls. They were all young, incredibly intense-looking women. There was no sound in the office but the scribbling of quills. I coughed gently, and all three of them looked up at me with glares.  
“It says in the leaflet that if someone loses their wand somehow, they can request one?” I said to them.  
“You’ll need to fill out these forms,” said one of them, getting up from her desk while she flicked open a drawer with her wand.  
“I still have my own,” I said, “But I need to see who’s lost theirs recently.”  
“Uh,” said the witch uncertainly, halfway out of her chair, “I’m not sure we’re allowed…”  
“They’re probably confidential,” said another.  
“But nobody’s actually said that,” said the third, speaking in the same brusque manner, as if they were losing time by speaking.  
“Better to be safe than sorry,” said the first, returning to her chair and picking her quill up.  
“Who’s your boss?” I asked them.  
“It’s Director Smith, of course.”  
“You answer directly to him?” I said.  
“Directly. Otherwise, nobody would listen to us,” said the third with a sigh.  
“Well, I’m here at the request of Professor Doctor William Grey. I’m investigating the recent death. I’m told there’s a way to communicate with the Institution on Earth, but I’d much rather we just skip that and you give me the request form records, okay? The result will be the same either way, but we’ll save an hour and none of us will be embarrassed,” I said slowly.  
The three witches all watched me like a nest of snakes. Then they looked at each other, their gazes lingering on each other’s unmoving faces. Maybe there were subtle visual clues that they’d all learned over time after spending so many long, sunless days in this office. I wondered what it would be like to be so far from anything that I consider human – not only the daily freedom of my self-employed life, but even a natural a day/night cycle. This must be what it was like for every resident on this base, I realised, to a greater or lesser extent. I thanked them when they gave me all of the request forms, and they made me promise to return them in perfect condition before the end of their day. Without the clocks showing the local time, I’d have no idea what time it was supposed to be here, let alone back in London. There were only a few lost wands, but each individual set of forms was quite thick. Sure enough, there was a section where each applicant had to fill out the details of their wands.  
I carried the bundle of papers with me to the conference room, meeting Bradley and Jones there. They both looked fairly impatient, but I apologised and we shut the door behind us. I gently put the wand on the conference table, letting Bradley and Jones look at it while I stacked the wand-request forms neatly.  
“Can you tell what kind of wand it is?” I asked Bradley.  
“On first glance, it looks like willow,” he said, pulling out his own wand.  
“I think it might be Hannah’s,” I said.  
“Does anyone know what kind of wand Hannah was using?” Jones asked.  
“That’s why I’ve got these,” I said, patting the lost-wand forms, “This broken wand is the first concrete clue I’ve come across, apart from the tracks outside obviously.”  
“Tracks?” said Bradley.  
“Yeah. Leading from the place she died, all across the landscape, around one of the big devices out there, back to the airlock where the hunt began.”  
“The hunt?” asked Jones.  
“Look, you can check it out later. Right now, I’d like to know about this wand, please,” I said patiently.  
“I’m not going out there again,” said Bradley.  
“He had a little trouble with claustrophobia in the space-suit,” Jones explained to me.  
“One-size-fits-all, they said. Rubbish!” Bradley muttered.  
“Well, you practically ate three chickens for dinner last night. Surely you can’t be surprised,” Jones said tensely, as if the argument had been bubbling away all morning.  
“If they loosened the waist, I’d be perfectly willing to go hiking across more forsaken bloody space-desert,” Bradley complained.  
“The wand?” I said, interrupting.  
“I was right,” said Bradley with a sigh, “It’s a willow. With a unicorn hair. Looks like it could be dual-core unicorn,” Bradley mused, looking down his bulbous nose at the splintered wand, probing it gently with his own that flickered and glowed softly. “No wait. Unicorn tail and… I think this might be Veela hair. It makes for a moody wand, some say. English wands don’t usually contain Veela. I reckon this wand might be French,” he said.  
“French? So, not Hannah’s?” I said.  
“You never know,” said Jones, leafing through the request forms, “I assume you brought these to cross-reference? To establish whose wand this was, if it wasn’t Hannah’s?”  
“Exactly.”  
It didn’t take us long to find the wand that had been lost – willow, with unicorn and Veela hair. Sure enough, it was a French wand.  
“Leon Besson?” asked Bradley.  
“Hannah’s boyfriend. They broke up shortly before she was killed. Did you even look over the file?” Jones asked Bradley.  
“Yeah, I’m in the queue. How come you managed to see it so early?” Bradley asked Jones.  
“Because I was early in the queue. You’d think they’d make the information readily available to the investigating teams, eh?” Jones said.  
“So we arrest this Besson guy then? We have someone who can do legilimency,” he said, motioning at me.  
“Wait,” Jones said, before I could object to being on their team and assert my independence, “It’s not that simple.”  
“What?”  
“This date,” Jones said, frowning at the form in front of him, “It’s two weeks ago. Long before Hannah went missing.”  
“Can I see?” I asked, and Jones slid the form over to me while he and Bradley kept bantering away about whether or not to arrest Leon Besson.  
Besson had reported his wand missing the day before Hannah’s birthday. The two broken fragments of that wand were clearly sitting here on the desk in front of me. It was entirely possible that he had reported the wand missing to provide him with an alibi – he could have kept his own wand a secret, like I did with one of mine. He could have lied about losing it, waited two weeks then used it to kill Hannah. If any investigators looked into the past few spells that his wand had cast, they would discover only those cast recently with the wand lent to him by the Institute. His old wand, the murder weapon, might well have been on its way into the sun. But this theory felt wrong. A crime of passion committed by an ex-boyfriend was usually a sudden, clumsy thing. This was planned. This was worrying.  
“Can you tell what spell this wand performed last?” I asked Bradley.  
“Well, the core is still intact. I could give it a go, but you both might want to step back. Just in case it’s the one that exploded the rock,” Bradley said.  
Jones and I stood at one end of the room while Bradley cast the spell. There was nothing but a few wispy, smoky sparks that spluttered out of the end. Bradley cast a different charm, checking on the last few spells that had been cast. I recognised all the spells.  
“Those are unlocking charms. Quite a wide range of them, from the look of it. But weak.”  
“So, he tried to break into her room after he killed her,” Bradley said.  
“Go deeper,” said Jones.  
“It gets unreliable, the further back in time we go. And I mean, the wand is already basically doomed,” said Bradley, gesturing at the two halves of wood, now fizzing with discharging magic.  
“Nevertheless,” said Jones.  
Bradley eventually submitted, and cast one more spell, going further back into the casting history of the wand. I watched him carefully. The ability to discover the memory of a wand was something I’d never really seen the point of until now – having seen how useful it was, I was paying close attention in order to learn it. There were a few more fizzling spells, and Jones started to yawn. Just as he did so, a lurid red ball of fire shot out of the broken wand.  
When I come to remember what happened next, it always looks like slow motion. I remember the fireball bouncing off the table. It was belching black smoke as it arced across the room and ricocheted off a wall, leaving a massive burn mark. But at the time, everything was happening too fast. Bradley was already diving away from the wand, so I was copying him, trying to get beneath the table to avoid the wild, deadly-looking spell. But Jones was looking bleary and confused, his yawn interrupted by the rogue curse. As I dived beneath the table, I saw the spell soaring over Jones’s shoulder, missing his head by inches. And then the world exploded.  
There was light, and heat, and so much noise that it became non-noise, a crackling, booming explosion. The table was picked up, blown back against the far wall, flinging me with it. I was crushed briefly between the wall and the table before it fell back to the floor, on fire. In shock, I managed to pull my wand out, and I managed to push myself onto my hands and knees while I gasped for air. I started to extinguish the fire around me, leaning on my knees and one hand while I struggled to breath the smoky, super-heated air. There was nothing but heat and disorienting noise, and my vision was a pattern of nonsensical light and darkness. My ears were ringing, deafeningly loud, and I was spraying extinguishing spells at as much fire as I was the lights dancing in front of my eyes. I saw Bradley lying next to me, trying to roll over and do the same.  
It seemed like an eternity. I must have blocked out the noise and lights. Eventually, I was aware of humanoid shapes moving through the air rippling with heat. I collapsed back onto my front, still gasping for breath in the boiling air as space-suits moved through the flames, putting out fire as they went. They were carrying fire-extinguishers – proper, red, muggle fire-extinguishers. The white foam spread out around us, and I was aware of someone helping me onto my feet. The humanoids around me were the elves, controlling the fire with a skilful coordination. Bradley looped my arm over his shoulders and helped carry me out, through the ruined, scorched wall of the conference room and into the corridor beyond. It was still full of smoke, but he carefully put me down on the floor, leaning against the far wall. Then he sprinted back into the fiery inferno, and I started coughing heavily. I was only aware I was coughing because of the pain and the motion. I still couldn’t hear anything besides deafening bells, and my vision was still made of brightly coloured after-images.  
The elves were swarming, more appearing out of the air every second with space-suits and fire extinguishers. It was only a matter of minutes until the fire had been completely put out, leaving nothing but a thick, horrible smoke in the corridor. Figures were rushing around me as I tried to cough my guts out, then someone put a flask of potion into my hand. I looked at it vaguely, with eyes made tearful and red from the smoke and the shock. Someone next to me in a Healer’s uniform was motioning for me to drink it, so I did. It was blissfully cold on my raw throat, and as I swallowed I felt the coughing ease away, my throat recovering from the heat. I could see again, but I couldn’t hear anything. I looked up to see Bradley carrying a burnt human form out of the fire, and at first I thought it was an elf, but as Bradley came closer out of the smoke I saw that it was Jones, missing his legs. His hair had been blasted away, along with quite a lot of his skin. The Healers immediately rushed around him, and helped Bradley carry Jones’s broken body out of the corridor. One of the Healers picked me up, but I was able to walk now, albeit staggeringly. I followed them to the infirmary.

*

The infirmary was a sterile room lined with beds. There were three Healers, all of whom rushed to help Jones. This told me he was still alive. They laid him on one of the beds and immediately started preparing potions, mixing flasks and blending bottles to create brightly coloured fluids that they applied to Jones’s body in thick handfuls, blobbing it onto where his limbs had been torn off by the explosion. Bradley and I were also given beds, but the Healer’s didn’t immediately get around to looking at us.  
“Terrence. Oh, Terrence,” I heard Bradley muttering sadly, as the ringing faded away slowly. He was distractedly examining his own burns, fingering the blisters and his burnt beard, but he didn’t take his eyes away from Jones’s bed opposite us.  
“He’ll be fine,” said one of the Healers, coming over to our beds to run his wand quickly over us, “And so will you,” he smiled.  
“He’ll live?! When will he be awake?” demanded Bradley.  
“His body has a lot to do,” said the Healer, “For him, the shock will be the worst part. There’s no way to know how long he’ll be unconscious. But all of his wounds are things we’ve seen before. We’ve dealt with a couple of accidental magical explosions in our time here.”  
“You’ve regrown missing limbs before?” Bradley asked, sitting back.  
“A few, yes. What can I say? These research wizards get carried away more often than they should. We tell them all the time, they should be more concerned with safety. Here, rub this onto your burns,” he said, giving each of us a bowl of thick green potion.  
“That shouldn’t have happened,” Bradley muttered as he took the bowl.  
“What shouldn’t?” asked the Healer.  
“It’s only supposed to be a memory of the spell. A vision of what the wand last did. Not the actual spell. It shouldn’t have done that, at all.”  
“You said so yourself,” I said, hearing my voice as if it was outside of my own head, “Wands with Veela hair are unstable. And the thing was broken in half, after all. It wasn’t your fault, it was just an accident.”  
“Was it, though?” muttered Bradley as the Healer strode away to join the other two, still attending to Jones.  
“What do you mean?”  
“I’ve heard of wands being booby-trapped, so that no one else can use them, or cast any spells on them. What if that’s what Leon did to his own wand, before he threw it away?”  
“If that was true, how did you manage to find out that the last few spells it cast were unlocking spells, like Alohomora and such. Besides, why would he do that? I don’t think Besson killed Hannah,” I said.  
“Bullshit. The time for doubt is over,” Bradley said as he got off of his bed, “I’m going to go and arrest him.”  
“Are you sure you’re well enough?” I said.  
“I feel fine,” he growled, looking at Jones’s unconscious, crippled body before striding out of the infirmary.  
“Oh good grief,” I groaned, and relaxed onto the bed while I applied the ointments.  
My jumpsuit had survived the explosion surprisingly well, protecting my body from the heat. It was only my senses that had been rattled. My various wands and weapons had all survived as well. My hair had been singed, but that could be sorted out by any hairdresser once I got back to Earth. I worried what Bradley would do to Besson, but I’d just been closer than I’d ever been to an explosion and I thought I deserved a break.  
“Do you still want me to follow Bradley?” asked Melanie, poking her ghostly head through the ceiling above me.  
“Stop doing that!” I exclaimed.  
“Sorry. I saw everything. Apparently you’ve had one hell of a morning, eh?”  
“It’s not lunchtime yet?”  
“Only just turned afternoon,” Melanie smiled, her eyes darting regularly to the Healers on the far side of the room, wary of being seen.  
“I think I know what Bradley will be doing. See if Wilson has any news, I suppose,” I said, “I don’t expect it’ll be any surprise. Bradley will probably be arresting him.”  
“Do you think he might get carried away?” Melanie asked.  
“I don’t expect so. He might be an idiot, but he knows the law. Make sure Wilson knows what’s what, and then hang around me as best you can. I don’t intend to get in Bradley’s way,” I said, remembering the look in his eyes.  
“It wasn’t your fault either, you know,” said Melanie softly.  
“What do you mean?”  
“You’ve been doing a good job,” she said.  
“I’ve tried, but I’ve found nothing,” I muttered, “Just a broken wand and a lot of rumours.”  
“That’s more than Bradley and Jones found.”  
“And look what happened,” I said sadly, motioning at Jones’s body.  
“It’s still early days,” she said, “Have some lunch. You’ll feel better after you get some food in you, probably. You living people need regular nutrition, I seem to recall,” she croaked, and winked as she vanished once more into the ceiling.  
I relaxed on the bed once more, massaging my burns as they vanished beneath the magical ointment. Eventually my hearing fully recovered, and I left the infirmary after thanking the Healers. I was on my way to get some lunch and clear the last of the shock out of my head, and I wandered past the destroyed conference room. Elves were picking over the ruined room, using their various magical tools to test the structural integrity of the walls, and the infrastructure hidden inside them. A few wizards in official looking uniforms with angry faces were also consulting with the elves, and I noticed Tog amongst them. I tried to double-back, and avoid any confrontation, but they’d already spotted me.  
“Miss Baker!” one of them demanded in an outraged, upper-class English accent. One of my least favourite. He was tugging neurotically on the short hairs of his goatee.  
“Yes?” I sighed, turning.  
“Would you like to explain what happened here?”  
“A magical accident. Apparently you guys get a lot of them up here,” I said, “Excuse me. I’ve had a very busy morning, and I’m starving.”  
“The Director wants to speak to you,” said another, in an accent I couldn’t place.  
“As in Smith? I thought she was on Earth.”  
“She is. Please come with us,” said the English wizard, and the restrained anger in his voice made me briefly consider running. I’ve been a very good runner in my time – not physically, not since I left school. But this base was entirely unfamiliar territory. And besides that, I reminded myself, I had nothing to be afraid of. I followed the British accent.  
The wizards led me through the corridors, and based on my limited knowledge of the layout of the building, it seemed like we were heading away from the cafeteria and out to the very edge. We passed several big warehouse doors, and I noticed more and more ducts and cables and pipes lining the walls. We climbed up a staircase, and emerged into a large chamber. A big window looked out on a far-away launch tower on the lunar surface, like the one that had carried me out into space. Covered walkways and large cranes surrounded it, and the golden launch-pod rested on top, waiting for the murder to be solved. I could see other launch-pods lying idle, and even at this distance I could see the layers of moon-dust lying on them. I assumed they were some sort of escape capsules. There were control desks and flickering status lights everywhere, but very few wizards operating them. The equipment here was sitting idly, like the capsule, waiting to launch. Cooper was sitting in one of the chairs at a desk full of switches and valves, leaning forward on his elbows as he stared longingly at the space capsule, puffing idly on a clay pipe. He looked up as we entered. On the back wall, there was a large mirror, nearly as big as the window. I could tell from the dark swirls behind the glass that it was somehow enchanted.  
“Commander, I hear there’s been an arrest,” said Cooper, standing up. He was the man who had flown the capsule that I had arrived in.  
“That’s shaky legal ground,” said the wizard with the posh accent, stroking his chin.  
“Commander, I’m going stir crazy sitting around this place. I was born to fly!”  
“Commander?” I asked.  
“I’m the Launch Commander here,” he said, pompously.  
“So, you’re in charge?”  
“Of the launches, yes,” he sniffed angrily, and strode directly to the mirror on the back wall, waving his wand over it. Within moments, the swirling smoke inside the glass resolved, along with the view of the launch tower reflected by it. In its place, the huge face of Director Smith appeared. She looked furious.  
“Baker! What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she bellowed, and I had to wince back from her giant, angry face.  
“Good afternoon, Director Smith. Is it afternoon there?” I asked politely.  
“You’ve blown a damn hole in the building!” she shouted.  
“These things happen. There is no hole in the building. And nobody was killed,” I said.  
“You got damn lucky. Do you have any idea how lucky? If anyone had died as a result of your foolishness, I’d have you charged with every law I could get my hands on!”  
“But nobody died. And we discovered some useful information,” I said calmly.  
“Useful information? I hear the Ministry men have made an arrest already!”  
“There are jurisdictional issues-” I said, improvising, trying to find a way to explain to Director Smith that I didn’t think they had the right man.  
“You’re supposed to be our damn team! A team of one woman and a damn ghost! It’s ridiculous,” she snapped, “You’ve made the Institution look like damn fools. Blowing up Ministry men, who solve the case despite your incompetence threatening their lives, and the lives of everyone in the building!”  
“It was actually thanks to my discovery that the aurors came to their conclusions,” I said, my voice tense now but remaining calm.  
“Their conclusions? You sound like you don’t agree with them,” she said, her curiosity interrupting her rage momentarily.  
“There are unexplained elements,” I said.  
“I don’t care!” she snapped, “There’s been an arrest! That’s all I care about!”  
“You don’t care if he didn’t do it?” I asked softly, “Somewhere here is the person or persons who killed Hannah Pierce,” I said, adding professionalism to my calm tone.  
“Damn Hannah Pierce!” snapped the Director angrily. I was aware of everyone in the room stiffening immediately. Next to me, the Launch Commander pursed his lips, rocked forwards on his feet, angled his chin out, but said nothing. Cooper whistled under his breath. A few of the wizards in my field of vision exchanged shocked glances. “Grey obviously had far, far too much faith in you,” Director Smith continued, trying to forget what she had just said, “I don’t want you to put a damn foot wrong. I want you on the first capsule back to Earth! Commander, get everything ready! Do you understand?”  
“I assumed I was under contract from Professor Doctor Grey? Will I still be getting paid?” I said coldly, and I was rewarded by the redness returning, colouring her face a bright shade of puce as she spluttered with disbelief. Her face vanished from the large mirror, and the reflection of the launch tower returned.  
Cooper turned excitedly to the Commander, a bright, energetic look in his eyes.  
“How long until we can launch?” Cooper asked.  
“I’ll talk to her when she’s calmed down. But yes, Cooper. It looks like we can start the pre-launch checks at least. Miss Baker, I suggest you return to your room and lie low for a while. I’ll send someone to get you when the capsule is prepared.”  
“I’ll be in the cafeteria. I’m starving,” I said, and strode to the stairwell.  
“It was a clear picture, at least,” Cooper said, idly.  
“It’s still lunar day, at least for a little while” said the Commander, as he sighed impatiently, “We’re still facing the Earth. Of course the signal is clear.”  
I trotted down the stairs briskly, out of their view. I let out a long, shuddering breath when I was sure that no one could see or hear me. And then my brain caught up with my ears, and I sprinted back up the stairs.  
“When was dawn?” I demanded.  
“What?” they both said, looking at me strangely.  
“When was the dawn? When did the sun come up on the lunar surface?”  
“About twenty days ago,” Cooper said uncertainly.  
“Twenty days! Damn! Why didn’t I think!” I exclaimed, and rushed back down the stairs.  
When I was sure once more that nobody could hear me, I slowed down slightly and called out Melanie’s name. She floated out of the wall, hovering alongside me as I hurried.  
“Go and find Charles. Charles Guetta.”  
“Who’s he?” croaked Melanie.  
“He’s the best friend of Leon Besson,” I said impatiently.  
“What does he look like, though? Where will he be?” she asked.  
“… Those are good questions,” I said grumpily.  
“We can go through the personnel files, find his name, match it to a photo?” she suggested. Clearly Jack and I had been rubbing off on her – probably Jack more than me, of course.  
“I know a quicker way to find out,” I said, “Find Wilson. Tell me where Bradley is keeping Besson. Hurry!” I said.  
“What’s all this about?”  
“It’s about something an elf told me. Charles Guetta and Hannah Pierce were seen arguing on a balcony. It was such an argument that Guetta hit Hannah.”  
“Because she dumped his best friend?” Melanie asked.  
“No. No, not at all. They argued at night. Dawn was twenty days ago. The form that Besson filled out for his missing wand was between dawn and her birthday. Hannah dumped Besson after her birthday. I think Guetta stole Besson’s wand, waited two weeks and then used it to attack Hannah.”  
“That giant-faced woman told you not to investigate anymore,” Melanie said with a grin.  
“Fuck that,” I grinned back, “Go, quickly.”  
“I’m on it,” said Melanie, “Where will you be?”  
“I’ll be in my room. I have something I need to pick up,” I said.  
The corridors were starting to make more sense to me now, and I felt confident enough to start running through them, dodging the wizards and witches who looked up in alarm. I even dodged one of the women from the office, who had loaned me the forms for wand replacements. She was eating a sandwich, but I rushed past as she opened her mouth, the fury evident on her face as she opened her mouth to shout after me.  
In my room, I snatched up the moving picture of Hannah from her birthday, cuddled by Leon and joined by a third man. Just as I did so, Melanie appeared, telling me that Bradley was standing guard with Jack outside Leon’s room, where he was tied up with ropes. It was only a few corridors away.

*

“I need to speak to him,” I said to Bradley.  
“I thought you said he didn’t do it,” he said, standing in front of Leon’s door with folded arms. He had a wand in each hand.  
“I still need to speak to him. Don’t be so stubborn, Bradley. You know I’m better at it,” I said with a slight smile.  
“What do you intend to ask him?”  
“You can watch,” I said, “It might prove his innocence. Or go some way to it.”  
“I’d rather wait until Jones is awake. He should be here for Leon’s questioning.”  
“There might not be time,” I said, “Haven’t you heard? The capsule is launching in a few hours. If that happens, we might lose everything, and the Ministry will send another innocent man to jail. Remember Sirius Black?”  
“I’m not sure what will happen to Besson,” said Bradley uncertainly, “I don’t know whether he’ll be tried by an English court, or a French one. What do you mean the capsule is launching?”  
“I need to talk to Besson immediately.”  
“Right, fine. But I’m watching,” he said, “And if you try legilimency, I want you to tell me everything you find out, alright?”  
I agreed, and Bradley let me into the room. It had the same furnishings as the other rooms, of course. It was sparse – a framed photograph of him and Hannah, kissing on one of the balconies with the Earth in the background as nightfall crossed America high in the sky. I wondered who had taken the photo, and the answer was probably Charles Guetta. Leon was tied up on his bed, and gagged, trying to wriggle free. He stopped as he turned his angry eyes upon us. His face was bruised.  
“Damn it, Bradley,” I muttered.  
“What?”  
“You didn’t have to hit him,” I said.  
“He tried to resist arrest,” Bradley shrugged, but he had the decency to cast his eyes on the floor, subtly ashamed.  
“We needed his cooperation,” I said, pulling the gag from Leon’s mouth.  
“Je ne vous dirai rien,” said Leon.  
“What did he say?” I asked Bradley, who shrugged. “Leon, I want to help you. I don’t think you killed Hannah.”  
“Je ne tomberai pas pour vos astuces,” he said.  
“Is this Charles Guetta?” I said, holding up the photo and pointing at the third person, the man who had looped Leon’s arm around him at the birthday party. Leon merely shook his head.  
“This is getting me nowhere,” I said, and put my hand on Leon’s forehead, tilting his head back. With a wand in my hand, staring into his eyes, I started to perform legilimency.  
“Don’t forget, if you find anything –” Bradley was saying.  
Legilimency is a strange magic. It allows the caster to explore the memories of the person its being cast upon. Even someone untrained in the subtle art can resist to some degree, with a clear mind and focused intention. Luckily, Besson’s mind was raging with emotion which made it vulnerable. Not only was his ex-girlfriend dead, but he had very recently suffered unjust incarceration and abuse from a big, bearded English oaf. In this respect, Bradley had actually done me a favour.  
Delving into someone’s memory can be like looking over their shoulder for their entire life. I was looking for very specific information – the identity of Charles Guetta – but even so there were still some memories that spilled over. Sure enough, the third man in the photo was Guetta. I also watched Leon and Hannah first meet. They met each other regularly for several months, flirting and chatting idly under the lunar sky before anything physical happened. I tried to skip over the first time they had sex, for the sake of poor Hannah’s modesty, but it doesn’t always work that way. I briefly watched their awkward, sober fumbling beneath the sheets of her bed. There was a montage of the times after that, and I was glad to see that they got better at it. They even talked jokingly about weddings, briefly, which was when Hannah mentioned how much she liked vanilla sponge. There was her birthday party. When they finally broke up, I felt sadness overwhelm me. It was a long, tearful conversation. Hannah arrived in his room looking stressed and upset, telling Leon that it was over. Leon asked why, again and again, but Hannah didn’t tell him. Whether she wouldn’t, or couldn’t, it was hard to tell. Leon even asked whether it was to do with Charles, and how Hannah and Charles hadn’t been at all friendly to each other recently, but he rushed the question amidst dozens of others and never got a straight answer to any of them. Leon tried to kiss her, to hold her close, but she pushed him away and left his room in tears.  
There was one last memory of him discovering something in her room as he searched for a keepsake. He was interrupted by someone – me – as he tucked a package of letters into one of the pockets of his jumpsuit. It was hard to see these letters in his memory, but the memory of where he’d hidden them was vibrant. I finished the spell and left his mind. He reeled, his eyes unfocused, and I stood up before he had time to think about what had happened.  
“– then you need to tell me immediately, understand?” Bradley was still saying.  
“Melanie? Wilson?” I said into the air, and both ghosts appeared out of the wardrobe.  
“What the hell? Who’s she?” said Bradley.  
“This is Charles Guetta,” I said, pointing at the man in the photograph, “Find him. At the very least, he’s wanted for questioning.”  
The ghosts disappeared, and Bradley watched them go. He looked from them to me, and back to them as they floated away, already agreeing on where to search. He finally unfolded his arms, and ran his hands through his beard with a heavy sigh.  
“Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asked.  
“Charles Guetta was seen having an angry conversation with Hannah Pierce, probably several days before the lunar dawn. He was so angry that he hit her,” I said, looking for a reaction from Leon. He was still, with anger in his eyes, but this revelation gave him an uncertain look. “The memories of Leon have confirmed that they weren’t getting on for some reason. I think it’s more likely that Charles might have stolen Leon’s wand to kill Hannah. It was premeditated.”  
“But why?”  
“I don’t know,” I admitted, but I reached beneath the wardrobe and pulled out the bundle of paper that was taped to the bottom, “Yet.”  
“What’s that?”  
“This is what Leon found in Hannah’s room, when I discovered him there last night. It’s a bundle of letters, I think,” I said.  
“Please! Do not look at those!” said Leon, and began trying to wriggle free again.  
I unfolded one, and it was a love letter. I sighed as I unfolded the others, and they were all much the same. They praised Hannah’s freckles, her long legs, the way her eyebrows moved when she was talking. I leafed through several more, and it was much the same. But then I noticed one that was different. There were several others like it – the text was spelt out in letters cut from reports and newspapers, and the content was entirely threatening.  
“What’s this?” I asked Leon, showing him the first death-threat as I put the other, more affectionate papers on the desk.  
“Well, that solves it, then. That’s what he was looking for in her room,” said Bradley, crossing his arms once more and looking down with disdain at Leon.  
“I found them there. I did not send them,” he said.  
“That’s just what you would say.”  
“I don’t think he did,” I said, “I think these were sent by Guetta. Look here,” I said, showing him all of the evil letters.

‘Give it back me or I will kill you’

‘Give me back it what you took or you and your boyfriend suffer’

‘If you tell anyone I kill you’

‘You give it back or I will take it from you and then anyway kill you’

Bradley paused while he read the notes, leafing through them quickly. He frowned at each one. I hoped that he was allowing the details of each one to penetrate – the various fonts, the language use, the broken English, with the lack of contractions. But I had a sinking feeling he was just reading each one repeatedly.  
“He still could have written them,” said Bradley, pointing an accusatory finger at Leon.  
“No, because it mentions her boyfriend,” I said, “And from what I’ve seen, Leon has better English than these threats.”  
“That could be a smoke-screen,” Bradley suggested.  
“Again, you’re suggesting a level of premeditation that doesn’t fit Leon’s mental state,” I said.  
“Well, maybe this bastard is more crazy than you think,” Bradley said, glancing down at the prone form of the Frenchman once more.  
“I’ve been inside his head now. This man is a lover, not a scheming killer. I don’t think you’re being rational,” I said.  
Melanie appeared out of the wardrobe once more, almost vertical as she zoomed along. She pulled up violently, ceasing her forward motion with a suddenness that would have killed anyone living. If she had been alive, she would have been panting.  
“Lucinda! I’ve found the man,” she croaked, “Jack is watching him now. He was going through the remains of Hannah Pierce’s room. Jones is awake, too, by the way.”  
“Hannah’s room?”  
“I’ll be in the infirmary,” said Bradley, putting the gag back over Leon’s face.  
“But what about Charles Guetta?” demanded Melanie, but Bradley ignored her as he pulled open the door and rushed out into the busy corridor. People were rushing up and down the corridor like there was another fire.  
“Did he find anything?” I asked Melanie, leaving Leon as he lay. I pulled the door shut behind me – there was no time now to handle an angry, amorous Frenchman.  
“Not that I saw. I came here as soon as we found him. Is that okay?”  
“That’s fine,” I said, “What’s all this commotion?”  
“I don’t know,” said Melanie, fading back into the closed doorway, “I’ll keep an eye on Leon. I don’t want to be exposed.”  
“No, get me updates from Wilson,” I told her, and she nodded as she disappeared. I tried to stop one of the wizards hurrying past in the corridor, “What’s happening?”  
“Someone else’s room has been broken into!” he said, “Nobody is safe now! There are murderers and burglars everywhere!”  
“Who’s room?” I demanded.  
“I don’t know. That pale, weird woman, Loony Lovegood or whatever,” he said as he shrugged, and hurried away.  
“Where’s her room?” I shouted after him.  
“That way,” he said, pointing vaguely.  
After asking several more hurrying people, and rushing the corridors myself, I eventually found Luna’s room. She was standing outside of it, looking as tranquil and placid as ever. She was explaining herself in her floating, singing tone to one of the investigators from another government who was looking impatient with her mannerisms.  
“Luna, are you okay?” I asked as I arrived.  
“Oh, yes, I’m fine thank you,” she said with a smile, “It’s nothing, really. Just someone throwing my stuff around.”  
“Can you show me?” I asked, and Luna nodded. We entered her room, ignoring the blustering investigator. Luna left the door open but he didn’t try to enter, instead lingering outside and nodding officiously at the people who paused outside to peer in nosily.  
The room was full of newspapers and leaflets thrown around the room. The drawers and wardrobe were all open, of course, and the jumpsuits had been tossed out. But the majority of the things lying on the floor were old copies of The Quibbler. I picked one up and made a show of trying to tidy up the mess.  
“There’s no need,” she said, sitting on the bed with a bounce, “I don’t think anything is missing.”  
“What makes you think that?”  
“There was nothing in here but these,” she said innocently, kicking at the copies of The Quibbler, “I don’t really have many possessions besides all of these. I keep them for sentimental reasons, I think, mainly. But it’s quite understandable that somebody would think they were foolish enough to throw them all over the place,” she said vaguely, looking around.  
“Was your door locked?” I asked.  
“I always lock my door. Everyone does since Hannah was killed,” she said, lying back on the bed.  
“So it wasn’t Snorkacks then?” I joked, picking up several more issues.  
“Oh, it might have been, I suppose,” she said, sitting up again, “It’s a well-known fact that they can open any locked door. That’s why the seals on my Snorkack traps are so strong. If I ever do trap a Snorkack, I don’t want it to get away,” she said.  
“Wait. How strong are these seals?” I asked, almost dropping the magazines I was holding.  
“Very strong. The design was commissioned from dozens of the foremost goblins and wizards. I think even your Professor Doctor Grey helped on part of them. The goblins have been talking about paying me for the patent on them, since apparently at this stage they’re impossible to break open without the key. That’s what they say, anyway.”  
“And you gave Hannah the key when you saw her last, didn’t you,” I said, putting the magazines carefully on her desk.  
“Of course. She was going out anyway, and she offered. She seemed fairly insistent about the key. Otherwise how would she check the traps, you know?”  
“And did you ever get the key back?”  
“No. I thought there were probably more important things going on, really,” she said, twirling her long whitish-blond hair.  
“And I’m guessing Hannah knew how secure your Snorkack traps were? Like, no spell could break into them? No matter how many unlocking spells were tried?”  
“I’m sure I mentioned it,” said Luna uncertainly.  
“Have you checked them since her death?”  
“There didn’t seem much point, since the Snorkacks mostly come at night, mostly,” she said.  
“Yes, I got that,” I said impatiently, “Do you have a spare key?”  
“Of course. Why?”  
“Can I borrow it?” I said, standing over her as she lay back on the bed.  
“Why?” she asked lazily.  
“She thought it was important enough to visit while she was being pursued by a killer,” I said, trying to keep my voice level. I had only just realised it myself, “This station is not secure. Nowhere is safe. If she had something that someone else wanted, and she needed to keep it safe until the next capsule to Earth? She would hide it inside your Snorkack trap.”  
“What did she want to hide?” asked Luna.  
“I don’t know yet. But it looks like Charles Guetta might. Do you have a key?” I pushed.  
“I do. It’s around here somewhere. Accio key?” she said hopefully, trying to summon it. Nothing happened.  
I was already running down the long corridor, panting, the long distance through the twisting corridors taking its toll. Eventually I arrived at the room with the space suits. I checked the sign-out book – there were no suits signed out, but there was one missing from the lockers. The suit I had damaged was still in its dangerous locker, and I took one of the others, checking that it was fully functional.  
I transferred my wands and my weapons to the suit’s boots and pockets, including the key to the Snorkack traps. Again the process was needlessly complicated, but I strapped and buckled all the parts. And then I had to clunk my way through the corridors, lifting the heavy suit as I stomped my way to the relevant airlock. Several wizards and witches passed me in the corridors, but this must have been such a common sight that none of them paused to look at me. One tried to peer into my bulbous helmet, but I was dedicated to movement and didn’t let him stop me. Melanie found me shortly before I entered the airlock. She had to poke her face into the side of my helmet in order for me to hear her clearly.  
“Jack is tracking the man. He’s doing the same thing you are. He got a space-suit and he’s on his way across the surface of the moon. Where do you think he’s going?”  
“You tell me,” I snapped, heaving my bulk into the airlock.  
“Sorry, I didn’t hear that. I need to get my whole head in here,” she said, and I felt a frosty sensation across my entire skull as she stuffed her head awkwardly into my helmet, bobbing in and out to various degrees as she tried to move with me.  
“Isn’t this going to, like, affect my brain?” I asked her.  
“Probably not,” she said, and her voice echoed around the tiny helmet like it was the tiniest, most echoing space I could imagine.  
“It’s just that it feels really cold,” I said, “Run ahead and tell Jack what’s going on. And then go and fetch Bradley. Tell him that I’m doing the best I can to secure a piece of concrete evidence.”  
“Are you?”  
“What, doing my best? You bloody well bet I am.”  
“Why?” Melanie asked hesitantly, “You could just wait here for him, when he returns with the evidence.”  
“He might destroy it out there,” I said.  
“I meant, are you certain about this evidence.”  
“Damn certain,” I said, “Whatever Hannah hid in the Snorkack trap, Charles Guetta is after it.”  
The airlock door was massive. It took almost all of my strength to revolve the wheel that opened it, even thought it was a waist-height. Then I hauled the door open a fraction of a degree, but it was enough to let my slight frame slip through, even with the clumsy space-suit. I heaved the door closed once more, spinning the heavy wheel, and made a mental note to explain to the Director how inconvenient these heavy mechanisms were. There were a dozen posters of instructions on the walls, each of them telling me how to check the seals on my space-suit before I clicked the last turn of the wheel. I performed every step twice, anxiously, making sure that everything was airtight. And then I clicked the wheel shut, and the air was sucked magically out of the chamber. I pulled out one of my wands from its specialised pockets, and ventured out onto the lunar landscape for the first time.  
“You don’t need to do this,” Melanie said, “You could wait for backup, or just write it off. You could just give up, and let this Besson character face the music. Why risk yourself like this?” she pleaded, her rasping voice echoing around my helmet.  
“I know it’s not exactly my way. But today, in this place, it’s what I need to do. Now go, get on and find Jack and Bradley!” I shouted, my voice bouncing around the inside of my helmet.  
“Just be careful,” said Melanie mournfully, “This moon doesn’t need a third ghost.”  
Instantly, a sense of space made itself felt. I was looking up through my helmet into the dark void above me, full of more stars than I’d ever seen in my life. The sky was alive with celestial bodies. Every time I thumped my foot down, feeling the sticking charm activate clumsily, I saw the moon-dust pinch up around my boots. The Earth was just visible on the horizon, bright and shining, like a blue and white marble. I held out my primary wand, and I saw the heat of solar radiation crackling along its shaft. Intact wands are immune to this kind of heat, of course. But I hated to think about how hot the dagger sheathed in my boot was growing. I looked down at the lunar dirt once more, and saw that I was following a set of several footprints, none of them returning. Looking ahead, I could see a distant figure bounding across the landscape. I waved my wand at my feet, disabling the charms that held my feet so securely to the ground. And then I started bounding across the moon, nearly flying off again with each bent-kneed landing. I imagined that this was how Hannah must have felt.  
I was aware that I was voluntarily launching myself into danger. I would never usually dream of doing this, but it seemed like there was nothing else for it. I didn’t want Charles Guetta to send an innocent man to jail. I have seen it happen, and the impact that a missing man, a jailed man, can have on the history of a community, a nation and indeed a whole world. As I bounded across the grey plain, I reflected how much I missed the days when I could happily skulk in the shadows and take no hand in events.  
As I jumped along, I felt I was gaining on the distant figure. There on the horizon was the Snorkack trap – it was larger in person than it had looked from the balcony on which I had stood, viewing it, a lifetime ago. It was a couple of stories tall, and bristling with golden, sparkling antenna like an abstract modernist sculpture of a tree. At the very base there was a big golden cube framed with golden pillars at each corner, as tall as the figure now standing against it. I was close enough to fire a spell, intending to paralyse the figure. I missed, but the figure noticed it, and it ducked to the side, bounding away to the far side of the Snorkack trap. I kept jumping forwards, determined to stop Guetta from destroying whatever evidence he had come out here to discover, recover or destroy.  
I caught hold of a pipe, stopping my forward motion but swinging around to crash into the massive golden box. I felt the clang on the enchanted glass of my faceplate, and with bowel-tightening terror I told myself silently to never, ever repeat anything like that. I used my wand to switch the sticking charms in my boots back on, and plodded around the trap like a cartoon character on the hunt. I went around the entire trap once, but couldn’t find the figure I’d been seeking. A movement, reflected in the corner of my face-plate, made me turn and look up. The figure was amongst the antenna, staring down at me. The sunlight was glaring off his helmet, but as he realised I had seen him, he straightened up, and I finally saw the face of Charles Guetta. He fired a spell down at me from his vantage point. I dove to the side at the same time. As I dove I shot a spell up at him. My aim was even worse than his, but I managed to hit the trap. The spell sparked off the metal, shaking the delicate mechanisms and launching him from the trap, his arms and feet flailing wildly as he fell. I had removed his height advantage.  
I tried to hit him with a levitation spell, but he was falling too quickly, even in the low gravity. He landed clumsily on his chest, and though there was no sound I saw him bounce. The impact must have hurt. He pushed himself off the ground with one movement, avoiding the spells I shot, and his feet connected to the floor once more. He was clearly more experienced in these suits, since he was already moving, sprinting back to the trap as fast as the clumsy outfit would allow. I managed to connect a spell with his ankle. It glanced off, doing nothing to his suit’s integrity, but it made him stumble as it span away into space, fizzling away. He limped behind the trap, and I rushed around the other way.  
I had my back against the trap, slowly sneaking around a corner, when a spell shot past me. I ducked behind the pillar again, wishing I could communicate with him. Instead, I started levitating rocks out beyond the pillar, and flinging them at an awkward angle around the corner, to harass him without leaning around. I fired three or four at him, probably completely wide of my intended target, but enough to distract him. He deflected each one with curses or shield charms, but while he was distracted I leant around the pillar and shot a spell at his legs. I had summoned up ropes, but they twitched strangely in the air, entirely unlike what I had been expecting. Their strange momentum carried them wide, flailing out onto the moon. These also served as a distraction, though – both Guetta and I watched them wiggle away across the dust, but I had the presence of mind to shoot another spell at him, trying to petrify him.  
It struck his leg, but there was something in the space-suit that kept it from taking hold. I had only petrified one leg but his other leg was still limping. He was still lethal, but much less mobile. He shot a few spells in my direction but I ducked behind a pillar. All of his spells exploded in the ground behind me, sending white-hot fragments of stone flying in all directions. I saw the explosion in the reflection of my helmet first, so I had the time to cast a shield charm to deflect the expanding wave of shrapnel.  
I had no other option than to keep levitating moon rocks into his field of fire. The first two were exploded violently, but after that they were only dashed aside by casual curses. I circled around to the other side. As I did so, Jack Wilson floated out of the lunar surface and started shaking his hands, trying to block my path.  
“What is it?” I asked, but my voice only echoed around my helmet without being transmitted to him.  
“What did you say?” he asked, sticking his head into my helmet and giving me another sensation of brain freeze.  
“What is it?” I repeated.  
“Oh, right. He’s coming around as well, circling like a damn shark. If you want my advice, you’d better hide. I think this boy means business,” he said.  
“Thanks,” I said as sarcastically as I could while I launched myself back the way I had come. Sure enough, where he’d been standing was now deserted. I glanced at the footprints, but there were so many prints and fragments of smoking rock that I couldn’t tell anything. I didn’t want to carry on blindly circling the damn trap, so I motioned to Jack. I pointed to my eyes, then to him, and then both directions that Guetta might come from. Jack nodded, understanding that he was now my lookout. He drifted out, further and further, and I kept one eye on him while I crept back to the corner. There was nothing on the whole landscape but this trap, so I felt massively exposed. Glancing up into the antenna once again, I realised I was being foolish – the man only had one half-operating leg left, despite the space-suit. He would be on the ground from now on.  
As I crept along the wall, glancing at Jack regularly, I realised I was locked in some sort of grim merry-go-round. Alright, Guetta was nearly immobile now, but these suits slowed both of us down. With Jack floating out there on the landscape like a spectral watchtower, I was even more anchored. I motioned Jack to move quickly around the corner in front of me.  
A spell flew at him, passing through his incorporeal body, but exploding in the landscape behind him, adding another burnt crater to the moon. Jack was feverishly motioning at me, but I got the idea – Guetta was around the next corner. A few more spells flew at Jack, exploding in gigantic balls of flame behind him as he flew away. I took advantage of the distraction that he had provided and leapt to the corner, firing another petrification spell around the pillar. Just in time I managed to aim at the figure that was standing there, wand outstretched. But one of his knees buckled and as he slowly sank to the ground, my spell missed him by a fraction of an inch. I narrowly dodged an explosive charm. It hit the ground behind me and sent up a fireball, causing me to soar into the sky.  
I was flying high above the lunar landscape, waving my arms and legs in a panic. I was suddenly, deathly afraid of flying away into space. But the lunar gravity was kind enough to bring me back in, slowly but surely, and before I knew it I was hurtling back to the surface. It started slow, of course, but it got faster far too quickly for my liking. I was aware that Guetta was firing those same lurid, red explosive spells at me. A couple soared past my helmet as I struggled to cope with the impending ground. I had the presence of mind to cast a levitation charm on myself. My movement ceased just as I arrived on the ground. There was still enough momentum that I landed roughly, my impact causing a dust cloud while the spells rained down around me. Now I was aware that I was in the same situation that had claimed the life of Hannah, whether or not Guetta was impeded with petrification curses.  
The next thing I knew, Guetta was now standing over me, a wand pointed at my helmet. Both of my hands were empty, each wand having been kicked away from me. As I looked up at him, my hands were scrabbling clumsily in the dirt – even if my gloved fingers had made contact with my wands, I would never have known. I could see his lips moving inside his helmet, but I couldn’t even begin to understand what he was saying. There was a red glow already building in his wand, but at the same time, Jack was swooping down on him. The ghost stuck his head into the helmet, and he may have been trying to say something, but that wasn’t important. What was important was how Charles Guetta flailed wildly, shocked by the sudden noise inside his helmet and the freezing sensation that registered a moment later. I don’t need to imagine the terror that must have flooded through him as he checked his suit for holes – but as he did so, the spell that had been glowing at the end of his wand flew away wildly into space.  
I pulled my third wand from its pocket, the one that William had given me. I used it to disarm him while he was distracted once more, sending his wand flying away into the starry sky. He was competent enough to try to lunge for it as it flew, ignoring the possible leaks in his suit – of course, there were none, and by the time he had landed I was back on my feet. I petrified him once more, and his entire suit froze at last, sending him backwards onto the ground.  
Now I was standing over him and briefly considering just shattering his helmet. He had shot dozens of explosive spells at me, each of which might have been my painful death. He had made me more vulnerable than I would tolerate from anyone. I was still reeling, but I had enough sense to preserve his body for now. Instead I motioned for Jack, whose presence made itself felt as that freezing sensation in my head.  
“Keep an eye on him, okay?” I asked.  
“I’ll stand guard over his body,” he replied, while I switched on the sticking charm for my boots.  
“I intend to keep him alive,” I said.  
“You sure? I’d have killed him by now,” he muttered.  
“He’ll be needed later,” I said sternly as I strode away slowly, pulling the key out of my pocket to unlock the Snorkack trap. Guetta had left his in the lock. I did nothing but turn it. I put both keys into the pocket of my space suit, and then stepped back as I pulled open the large golden door of the trap.  
Inside, there was darkness. I lit my wand, casting an illumination across the inner chamber. There were runes covering every interior surface, each as tall as me. It was hexagonal, despite the cube shape of the exterior. In the middle, lying on a massive arrangement of runes, was a small metal cylinder. The cylinder shone in the centre. I was careful enough to cast a variety of spells into the space, checking for curses and traps. After all, Luna might have thought that Snorkacks were worth it. But the space was safe. I walked in, my space-boots thumping onto the floor’s runes. Looking at the walls and ceiling warily, I picked up the silver cylinder and backed out of the space until I was outside once more. I pushed the large golden door behind me shut behind me as I carried the cylinder out. I was cradling it like a baby. I strode away from the trap, carrying the trophy that Charles Guetta had tried so hard to find.  
I levitated Guetta into the air and carried him with me, frozen in his space-suit. As I was halfway back to the airlock, Guetta’s paralysed form floating in front of me, I was aware of several other figures bounding across the landscape. Inside the helmets of the suits, I saw Bradley’s concerned face taking in the sight of Guetta’s floating body, and the silver container in my clumsy grip. He looked me up and down, then silently offered to levitate the body into the airlock for me.

*

“So this is what it’s all about?” Bradley asked me. We were in the Launch Command room, with the Commander, Luna and several of the other investigation teams from other governments. We were all waiting for the Director to become available on the giant magic mirror. Charles Guetta was now tied up in his room, guarded by several of the investigators and the ghostly duo. Leon had been freed, with Bradley muttering a humble apology. But he had declined the invitation to the Launch Command room, preferring to remain in his room. Even now, the other research staff were glancing at him suspiciously, cautiously.  
“This is what it’s all about,” I said, uncomfortable being the centre of attention. The contents of the metal cylinder from the Snorkack trap had been spread out across one of the desks.  
The Director appeared on the big mirror, her face even more stressed and wired than it was before. This time she was sitting behind her desk, and was just stroking back her hair when her image resolved in the enchanted glass. She took a few moments to look at the scene before her, with me at the centre.  
“Good evening, everyone. I thought I made it clear that she should remain in her room?” she said, her tone frostily polite as she pointed at me.  
“We have a situation, Director,” said the Commander.  
“See, I told you. What’s she done now?”  
“She’s solved the murder, for a start,” snapped Bradley.  
“I thought that was no longer an issue?”  
“Not anymore it’s not, no,” said the Commander.  
The Director looked from Bradley, to the Commander, and finally her gaze settled on me. We locked stares for a brief moment, and I was rewarded with her looking down at her own desk before she took in the papers and the metal cylinder on the one in front of me.  
“Well?” she muttered.  
“These documents are about the French research project here on the moon, studying the effects of the moon on divination. They were collected together by Charles Guetta,” I said, indicating a thick red folder bound with twine, “And it looks as though he was going to sell them. We don’t know who to, yet. Guetta has a surprisingly resilient mind, indicating that he’s probably had some sort of training as a spy.”  
“Interesting. What does this have to do with Hannah Pierce?”  
“She found out about his plan, and stole the folder. She was trying to extort money from him,” I said.  
“How do you know this?” asked the Director.  
“Because of this letter,” I said, holding up a piece of paper that had been stuck to the front of the folder.  
“What does it say?”  
“It’s addressed to Professor Doctor Grey,” I said.  
“Well, that’s fine then. He’s here,” said Director Smith, and beckoned a figure into frame. William peered into the mirror, waving awkwardly, then sitting uncomfortably on the edge of Smith’s desk.  
“Hey, everybody,” he said.  
“What were you doing, skulking out of view?” Bradley asked.  
“Smith and I had something to discuss,” said William, looking pointedly back at the Director, who glared angrily at him, “What does the letter say? Don’t keep me in suspense,” he said.  
I passed the letter to Bradley, and he read it aloud for the benefit of William and Director Smith.

‘Dear Professor Doctor,  
You probably don’t remember me, but I remember you. I remember attending a lecture you gave about how encouraging you thought it was, all these governments working together up in space. I thought it would be great. It gave me hope, too, after I lost both of my parents in the war. But there’s something very wrong. There are spies and lies all over the place. There’s something corrupt. This is just one bit of evidence. You can see that he was going to sell all these secrets. He’s taking advantage of your noble dream, but he’s not the only one. That’s why I’m writing to you: I feel you can be trusted. If you read this, if it’s been found, it probably means that bastard Chuck has killed me. It feels strange to even write that. Please make sure you stop them.  
Hannah Pierce

PS: Tell Leon that I’m so sorry, and that I always loved him. But he needs better friends.’

William ran his hand through his hair and sighed as Bradley read the letter aloud. Director Smith was looking from him to the mirror, listening as Hannah Pierce’s legacy was shared with the whole room. As I looked around, I saw a lot of the investigators looking at each other with concern, or shifting awkwardly. I wondered how many of them had been sent up here with a secret agenda.  
“What made you think she was extorting him?” William asked when Bradley had finished.  
“Well, why else leave a note in the event of your death?” I said, “If she was just going to turn him in straight away, she could have done it any time.”  
“So, Guetta found out about it?” asked Smith.  
“She was probably being threatened for weeks. I don’t think she knew what she was doing, really,” I said pityingly, as a professional watching an amateur.  
“Then Guetta stole the wand of Leon Besson and waited for a chance to kill Hannah. After he killed her he tried everything to unlock the Snorkack trap, where Hannah had hidden this package,” I said, “But he didn’t realise that Hannah had a key.”  
“Good work, Lucinda,” William said with a proud grin. He turned to Director Smith, who was sitting back in her chair. “See? I told you,” he commented.  
“Yeah, yeah,” Smith said, sitting forwards, “Where is Guetta now?”  
“He’s tied up in his room. We’ll transport him back to Earth as soon as Cooper says we can board the capsule,” Bradley said.  
“What’s going to happen to him?” I asked.  
“I think we can push for a British trial, now,” said Smith confidently.  
“The French will complain, of course, and they’ll probably want to prosecute him for treason,” said William.  
“The punishment for treason in France is death,” said Smith uncertainly.  
“Hannah sounded like a sweet girl,” William added.  
“She was,” I said, “And her letter was very moving.”  
“So let the French have him after we’re done,” William said.


End file.
